A autolesão em adolescentes : reflexões sobre a deflexão e o contexto contemporâneo

Abstract

This study seeks to approach, under the scope of Gestalt-therapy, aspects related to non-suicidal self-injurious behavior in adolescents in the contemporary world. It develops from the author's clinical observations during her work in a Child Mental Health Outpatient Clinic. Throughout the work process, the author is guided by Gestalt-therapy, an existential-phenomenological and dialogical psychotherapy approach that conceives the man as a becoming in the world and with others, also responsible for its existence. It aims to broaden the client’s awareness of his possibilities in his relationship with the world. The incidence of self-injurious behavior in adolescents has left schools and mental health services on alert. The phenomenon has called attention due to its collective aspect, with several individuals using the symptom to relieve emotional pain. Stands out to the author a group of adolescents in which the symptom seems to reflect the impacts of the contemporary world and a way of relating and contacting the world marked by superficiality and lack of self-knowledge, manifestations coherent with a type of resistance that is called deflection by some authors in Gestalt-therapy. The aim is to understand these adolescents and their motivation to search for self-mutilation as an way of dealing with negative feelings. The conceptions of adolescence are retaken in the traditional and the Gestalt-therapy perspective, which has as its principle the understanding of how man perceives himself in the world of relationships. Based on reports of experiences and clinical experiences in dialogue with the theory of the Gestalt-therapy Contact Cycle, self-harm is thought of by the author as a symptom that adolescents in the contemporary world resort to to minimize their psychic suffering. The work is an attempt to think the influences of the deflection and the contemporary context in the emergence and the high incidence of the symptom. Finally, it is discussed how these elaborations can be applied in clinical and public health. It is not intended to suggest causes and answers, but rather to broaden the possibilities of approaching a topic so relevant today.