Existência, significado e identidade: a viagem como experiência ontológica

Abstract

This work is based on the contributions provided by tourism theorists who defend travel experiences as a source of reconstruction of the individual identities of tourists and travelers and also as potential processes of personal transformation. The work discusses the possibility of studying this phenomenon from the perspective of the the theoretical field of developmental psychology, with the concepts derived from identity formation studies. The study was divided into two parts, one theoretical, and other empirical. In the first part, forays in four different theoretical fields positive and existential-humanistic psychology, sociology of modernity, existentialist philosophy and tourism aimed to seek conceptual convergent lines, finding in the idea of the search for meaning for the very existence and the process of developing the sense of self-identity, that is, the search for ontological security, the field of conceptual intersection of these theoretical traditions. From the literature review in these fields and the adoption of the concept of eudaimonia, the study identified 15 possible dimensions of eudaimonic experience. In the second stage, two researches were undertaken, one qualitative and the other quantitative. The qualitative inquiry aimed to understand how the dimensions of eudaimonic experience identified in the literature would be manifested in the discourse of individuals who admittedly had experienced some kind of personal transformation during a travel, be it in the way of being or perceiving the world. With the exception of one dimension (Excellence), all the others were identified in the statements of the 9 interviewees. The second research consisted of a survey that aimed to validate the dimensions of tourism experience and to correlate them with measures that assessed the concept of identity Self Identity and Social Identity according to the neoEriksonian theoretical line of identity development. The dimensions of tourism experience were also correlated with the Existential anxiety and Agentic personality constructs. Six dimensions of eudaimonic tourist experience were confirmed Opening to new, Maturation, Autonomy, Eudaimonia, Intimacy and Belonging, and Opening perspective. Structural equations modeling with the partial least squares approach PLS-SEM tested the relationship between Existential anxiety and each of the confirmed dimensions of tourism experience, as well as the relation of these dimensions with Purpose in life, Self-Identity and Social Identity. Of all the theorized relationships, the results showed the dimension Eudaimonia of the tourist experience and the construct Purpose in life as the two main predictors of Self-identity. Purpose in life also predicted Social Identity, and, in turn, it was primarily predicted by the dimension Intimacy and Belonging. Contrary to previous qualitative research in tourism, Existential anxiety has not proved antecedent to any of the dimensions of the eudaimonic tourist experience, although interviewees who demonstrated deeper levels of personal transformation in the qualitative phase of the study showed signs of existential anxiety before traveling, attributing to the discomfort with their lives, the motivation to travel. Empirically verified relationships corroborate the idea of travel as a possible vector for experiences of self-discovery and reconstruction of the sense of self-identity, favoring the feeling of ontological security for individuals. The study contributes to research in the field of tourism by demonstrating the possibility of taking to this field the consolidated concepts of developmental psychology in the the neo-Eriksonian line of research on identity, the most traditional one.