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Interactive narratives about infant care and its affective-emotional meanings

As the motherhood clinic and research reaffirms the importance of social support to mothers, we intend to investigate the imaginary of graduate students about infant care. According to the assumption that we narrate to elaborate life experiences, we recognize that narration is a privileged procedure to access the underlying affective-emotional senses of any human conduct. We elaborated a fictional narrative about infant abandonment to be completed by students of Physical Education and Journalism. After psychoanalytical considerations, such imaginative productions suggest an ambiguous perspective. The mother is seen as responsible for the baby's destiny, despite the comprehensibility of her behavior, even if interpreted in terms of its social context. Such posture seems to translate the contrast between an ethical treatment of the maternal conflict and social expectations about maternal figure, usually hidden under the contemporary discourse of the politically correct.

motherhood; imaginary; narrative; psychoanalysis


Departamento de Psicologia da Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio de Janeiro Rua Marquês de São Vicente, 225 - Gávea, 22453-900 - Rio de Janeiro - RJ, Tel.: (55 21) 3527-1185 / 3527-1186, Fax: (55 21) 3527-1187 - Rio de Janeiro - RJ - Brazil
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