Autorretrato de crianças em internação hospitalar: considerações para pesquisa sobre o funcionamento psicológico infantil

Abstract

Is reported here a research on the use of self-portrait as a tool to investigate the meaning production of children about the hospital spaces frequented during the period that they are hospitalized. Another objective of this research was to carry out a discussion between meaning processes and psychological processes, to provide a discussion about the need to adapt hospital spaces destined to children, as well as a discussion about the adequacy of methodologies for the investigation of the psychological processes of children. To meet these objectives, this research was based on assumptions of socio-historical approaches in Psychology. The alignment between these approaches and the objectives is revealed in that they point to the social origin of the psychological processes emphasizing the fundamental role of language as a mediator between the physical, cultural and historical environment and the human organism. The participants of this research were seven children aged between six and eleven admitted to the University Hospital Prof. Alberto Antunes of the Federal University of Alagoas (HUPAA-UFAL). As a data collection procedure, drawings workshops with narratives about these drawings were carried out in three different places of the hospital: Infirmary, Play Room and Reception. The data were analyzed by combining quantitative techniques and microgenetic analysis. The relationship between psychological functioning and meaning was evidenced in two situations, which were, the expansion, which happened in the narrative of the child when it was talk about his drawing and the tension, when the children were taken to contemplate themselves in the drawing. As a conclusion, it is considered that the set of information that children have produced about their experiences confirm the potential for self-portrait to promote the meaning process. Moreover, the configuration of tensions during self-confrontation, physically and represented in the drawing, demands a deepening of the properties of the use of this tool in the research. As another conclusion, it was observed that in the infirmary environment the children presented a greater production of meanings. The analysis of these productions supported the interpretation that this environment must be reorganized to better serve the children's audience.