Os efeitos da mastectomia sobre a sexualidade feminina, a partir da clínica psicanalítica.

Abstract

This research approached the effects of mastectomy surgery on the women that attended the outpatient care at the Hospital Alberto Cavalcanti (HAC) of the Fundação Hospitalar do Estado de Minas Gerais (FHEMIG) in Belo Horizonte/MG. The focus of this work was the analysis of the effects of medical intervention on feminine sexuality. The question that motivated this investigation was: why outpatient women do not approach, in their clinical care, the theme of death, but issues related to body image and sexuality? As for the research methodology, bibliographic research and case study were used. The theoretical framework that was mainly used for this observation was the lacanian psychoanalysis. The major themes that sustained the theoretical discussion were: body, body image, the beautiful, view and feminine sexuality. The clinical cases that were analyzed showed that, for these women, breast mutilation resulted in a confrontation with the real, arousing anguish. The mastectomy caused shock on their body image and loss of the significant reference that placed them in the field of sexual identification, as women. We found that the notion of femininity, for them, was attached to their body beauty. We identified two kinds of answer that the subject gave to this confrontation with the real: the loss of identification with the feminine identificatory reference with disinvestment in body image; reinvestment in body image with the reconstruction of the symbolic feminine identificatory reference. In the second case, there were repercussions for the function of the beautiful. According to Lacan, the beautiful, as a shape, has an imaginary statute, but represents a symbolic effectiveness. It is an attempt of the subject to be distant from the real, to avoid anguish before the imminence of the Thing. Thus, the beautiful operated, for these women, as a barrier against the real.