Abstract

CAMPOS, Karina Stagliano de  and  CORDEIRO, Sílvia Nogueira. Maternity and premature birth: The encounter with the traumatic experience. Psicol. clin. [online]. 2022, vol.34, n.1, pp. 105-119. ISSN 0103-5665.  http://dx.doi.org/10.33208/PC1980-5438v0034n01A05.

Due to the high rate of premature births in Brazil, prematurity is a very worrying event, and women, impacted by the untimely childbirth, face a moment of significant traumatic potential. This is a clinical-qualitative research whose participants were mothers of very premature or extremely premature babies still hospitalized. The thematic content analysis technique was used for polishing the findings, with the stipulation of a posteriori categories analyzed according to the theoretical reference of psychoanalysis. The category covered in the article "I went into shock, and said 'and now how will it be?': The encounter with the unexpected and the traumatic experience" deals with the traumatic situation faced by mothers when confronted with the interruption of their pregnancy, stumbling against the Real, facing a process of difficult symbolization, and the attachment to religion in an attempt to account for a fact so hard to symbolize. The importance of offering specialized listening to these women is examined, so that they can impart a meaning to this moment and depict the Real that became present, so that a psychological trauma is not, in some way, triggered.

Keywords : premature birth; psychoanalysis; maternity; trauma.

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