TRINCA, Ana Maria T.. O morto e o vivo. Psic []. 2002, 3, 2, pp.14-19. ISSN 1676-7314.

The permanence and influence of a dead person in an individual's mental life is discussed drawing on psychoanalytic references. True facts, by superposing the peculiarities of a child's psychic functioning in a certain stage of his/her psychosexual development, determine increased fantasies and personal interpretation of facts. The issue of death is focused from the development of fantasies by a five-year-old child, who loses his father in a murder and has to undergo a phimosis surgery. The author describes the way the child unconsciously keeps his dead father in his mind, who thus becomes alive and persecutive. New life experiences introduced into a predetermined historical context make the child bring foregoing emotional situations to his present time. Fears, castration anxieties, and use of defense mechanisms are emphasized with colorfulness peculiar to Oedipean configurations.

: Death; Oedipus complex; Child surgery; Psychoanalysis.

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