Cheias de graça: gestação e sentimento de plenitude espiritual - a experiência místico-religiosa na gestação, parto e maternidade em dois grupos de mulheres

Abstract

This study investigates the mystical and religious meaning of pregnancy, childbirth and postnatal in two separate groups of women: a) women whose pregnancy means adversity in their personal history, and b) women whose pregnancy is synonymous of personal achievement. The aims of the study are: understanding the way these motherhood processes are understood by women, and how they are prepared psychologically from the body transformation that occurs in reproduction; observing the existence of mystical and symbolic elements in this universe; investigating the thorough meaning of the elements that were expressed and possible differences in mystical experience, in both symbolic and religious groups; observing possible changes of consciousness since the gestational experience when lived in the conviction in God. According to the hypothesis that there is an experience of transcendence into the experience of immanent and natural reproduction - which expands the consciousness of women, increasing its existential meaning which consists the pregnancy, childbirth and postnatal psychological experience as an archetypal experience - this research examined the speech and the drawings of 25 women about their own pregnancy, childbirth and postnatal, conceded by them as they experienced those conditions. Fourteen women were accompanied in the Amparo Maternal shelter - charity institution that shelters abandoned pregnant women and women without individual earnings of survival - and eleven women who wanted / planned the pregnancy and present some social structure in favor of this condition, referred to this research by the health professionals. To analyze the assumptions, in this sample, three instruments were used: interview, questionnaire of mystical experience in the nursery (based on Hood, Valle, Allport-Ross and Hardy) and projective technique of drawing (with the theme of "being a mother"). Through the collected material quantitative, qualitative and comparative analysis, among the methods and in the two groups were analyzed, using the theoretical structure of social psychology - especially Vergote, Paiva and Valle - of Jungian psychology - Campbell, Neumann, Chevalier-Gheerbrant - and the psychology of Pregnancy - second Maldonado, Harding and Hrdy. The results demonstrate that there is an archetypal meaning in the experience of motherhood lived during the pregnancy, childbirth and postnatal, pointing to a mystical experience; indicating growth and development for women as an increase of the respectability of itself even though social conditions and economic adversity. In a deep-level of understanding, the processes that were observed show to be agent promoters of the process of individuation, as well as elements of spiritual emancipation for women. In conscious level, motherhood is presented in both groups as profound experience of God and as a trigger for mystical experience for the woman; differences between the groups in this regard were not observed. However, in the comparative analyses, occasional differences about the meaning of mystical experience were more frequently identified, in each group, with more repetition of meaning of Blessing, Fear, Rejection, Guilt, Redemption, Conversion and sanctity in Group A; and sanctity, Spiritual development, Blessing and power for Group B