Abstract

MEDRANO, Carlos Alberto; PADILHA, Maria Itayra Coelho de Souza  and  VAGHETTI, Helena Heidtmann. The therapeutic toy: notes for a re-interpretation. Rev. Mal-Estar Subj. [online]. 2008, vol.8, n.3, pp. 705-728. ISSN 1518-6148.

This study uses a qualitative, historical approach carried out through documental analysis. It is founded upon the analytical interpretation of Michael Foucault. The intention of this study is to reflect on the concept of the "therapeutic toy" present in the scientific production of the field/territory of Brazilian Nursing during the period of 1980 to 2005, as well as the administrative, legal, and practical measures of this device. The theoretical reference is anchored, equally, in Michael Foucault, from the notions of biopower, disciplinization, and device, and made it possible to comprehend the effects on knowledge and practices linked to playing as it occurs in the hospital territory. The categories that emerged from the consisting corpus were playing and technique, or an association of these. One concludes that the therapeutic toy is much more than a technique, consisting of a device that concentrates a set of discursive and non-discursive practices, of legal regulations, and knowledge that constitute a true policy of the body and of subjectivity in the pediatric wards of hospitals. It was also perceived that from the construction of knowledge related to psychology, that playing was being imprisoned first by academic knowledge, and later was used to construct a series of administrative and legislative measures in order to discipline and to medicate, almost as a condition for entrance, or for permanence in the hospital. It was observed that still today the main concern is to continue justifying the value of a practice or of a technique, derived from the origin of the theoretical subsidies acquired by the professionals to organize, to manage, to conduct activities related to the hospitalized child's playing. Finally, it was verified that making playing common and simple, the "fetishism" that makes the object toy the value to be exalted and not to be the value, making and creating, where to find the truth of each citizen through lucidity (illusion) does not do anymore than to reaffirm the instituted in detriment of the new, the different, the mysterious.

Keywords : therapeutic toy; hospital; child; nursing; psychology.

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