Elaboração psíquica de pacientes oncológicos: uma reflexão a partir da psicossomática psicanalítica e da contemporaneidade

Abstract

This work aims at understanding the psychic elaboration of leukemia patients based upon the concepts of both psychoanalytic Psychosomatic and contemporary subjectivity processes. Having as support the concept of health-disease process, Psychosomatic deals with the knowledge of the biological aspects of the disease and the knowledge of a set of ideas involving the approaches to human beings both as social and psychological beings. Therefore, the method that is proposed is interdisciplinary. It is guided by the principles of Psychosomatic and of Discourse Analysis. We do so in order to highlight the events as a complex process, articulated throughout the clinical and psychosocial dimensions, via language. In the realm of the discussion involving body and mind, many scholars, especially from Psychoanalysis, have made commitments to build a solid theoretical field in an attempt to elucidate psychosomatic knowledge. Thus, the ideas of psychosomatic profiles of Psychosomatic School of the Chicago School stand out, represented by Helen Flanders Dunbar, with her studies on psychogenic emotional conflicts, and Franz Alexander, when he first points out psychosomatic illnesses. In recent decades, the proposed psychotherapeutic treatment of somatic patients has allowed the emergence of the concept of operative functioning, developed by Psychoanalytic Psychosomatic School of Paris, represented by Pierre Marty. From a guiding question, we try to clarify how the affective experiences and the psychic development of leukemia patients happen when they have to cope with the outbreak and the treatment of the disease. For this purpose, five hospitalized patients with acute leukemia took part in the study, held at the Foundation of Hematology Hospital of Amazonas. Significant data have been found related to: the history of losses and not prepared bereavements, current aspects of life as determinants of the disease process, elaborative psychic failure, subjection relationship and suffering at work, psychosomatic compliance feature, abolition of desires and will. It was also identified affective deletion, which is commonly found in somatic patients facing the disease, its treatment and hospitalization. This dramatic process, made stronger by the fear of death, was named as "naked life", the original concept coined by Agamben (2002), here understood as the biological life interfacing with an increase of the death drive and the apparent lack of emotional constraints, experienced by the cancer patients involved in the research.