Abstract

BITTENCOURT, Maria Inês Garcia de Freitas. Environment, symbolic space and children´s fears. Lat. Am. j. fundam. psychopathol. on line [online]. 2007, vol.4, n.2, pp. 229-237. ISSN 1677-0358.

This paper intends to present some questions about playing that raised from psychoanalitical work with children exposed to violence in their daily life : a particular kind of fear, related to real situations, affects their intelectual and social development. Some concepts from Winnicott´s theory of transitional space are proposed to define the difference between reality and imagination experiences and the importance of symbolic playing in childhood.

Keywords : Childhood; Environment; Symbolization; Fear.