O corpo próprio e o HTLV : percepções do ser-pessoa à luz da fenomenologia de Merleau-Ponty

Abstract

Introduction: The diagnosis of Human T-Cell Lymphotropic Virus (HTLV) transcends the purely biological dimension, configuring itself as an event that restructures subjectivity and the way of inhabiting the world. Objective: analyze the perception of the person-being living with HTLV through the perspective of Maurice Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology. Methodology: This is a qualitative investigation with an existential phenomenological approach. The study was conducted with 12 participants diagnosed with HTLV (identified from E1 to E12), using phenomenological interviews as the data collection instrument. The analysis was based on the description and interpretation of lived phenomena, grounded in the concepts of body-subject, intersubjectivity, and the flesh of the world. Results: The findings were organized into four thematic categories that narrate the participants' existential journey: 1) The rupture of the own body and the opacity of the diagnosis, which unveils the initial trauma and the loss of bodily transparency; 2) Embodiment marked by pain and the body as an obstacle, highlighting how rigidity and loss of motor skills restrict the subject's horizon of possibilities and the "I can"; 3) The intersubjectivity of stigma and social silencing, which explores the weight of the other's gaze and secrecy as a strategy for preserving dignity; and 4) Resignification and the search for a "possible life," highlighting the role of faith, creative adaptation (such as the use of assistive technologies incorporated into the body schema), and therapeutics in the recovery of intentionality. Conclusion: Living with HTLV reveals itself as a constant dialectic between the body-obstacle and the body-possibility. The perception of the person-being is marked by a continuous relearning of inhabiting a body that has become opaque, but which, through existential resignification, seeks to maintain its dignity and agency. The results reinforce the need for humanized nursing care that recognizes the patient not as an object of pathology, but as a subject in constant becoming.