This work constitutes an extension of the research "Psychosomatic evaluation of the risk of sickness in women with a history of breast cancer in the family" that has been carried out at Centro de Psicologia Aplicada da Universidade Federal de Juiz de Fora, Minas Gerais, since 1999. It considers the relation between individual and familial levels of psychosomatic evaluation on the risk of illness development . The text highlights the maternal function as an analytical operator, trying to elaborate both types of evaluation: the individual level, that focuses on the internalization of the containing function provided by the mother; and the familial level, which seeks to capture, through interfantasmatization mechanisms, the efficacy of the familial group as a maternal function's representation issue. It is based on the studies from the Psychosomatic School of Paris about mental function's on somatizations and also on the psychoanalytical researches about family, conceived as the "maternal body" and the anchor of excitations, conflicts and phantoms which circulate around the family group. The case study uses the "Analysis of Discourse" involving three interviews with the individual and three with the family. This case proved the adequacy of this investigation proposal.
psychosomatic evaluations; breast neoplasms; maternal function