Corpo, imagem e subjetividade: envelhecimento como processo vital

Abstract

The purpose of this study was the reflection on the aging processes, thinking them as singular and vital processes. The field work privileged the contact with people in a existential stage where force and physical vigor, social roles as well as psychic and cognitive characteristics, are moving and it can generate psychic suffering. For this contact, a psychotherapeutic group process was conducted, with 9 women, between 63 and 86 years, for four months, using a psychological-body approach. The theoretical reflection was based on the question of subjectivity and on concepts of the Bioenergetic Analysis: the notion of grounding, the concepts of self and false self, and the understanding of the narcissism as being resulted of the split body-mind, in the individual as in the social and cultural values. There is a need of new paradigms in the approach of the aging. We are a generation that goes aging with new conditions of longevity, what makes possible to experience new modes of living. A new paradigm is to look at the aging as a vital process that creates new subjectivities, and to look at the aged person as a new person, with a new subjectivity. The present work understands that the body-mind connection is a starting point for the human being questions. This approach supports inner conditions for new subjectivities