Velhice como fase da vida: contribuições da Psicologia do Desenvolvimento à constituição de uma Filosofia e Psicologia da Velhice e do Envelhecimento

Abstract

This Thesis arises from an ethical and epistemological concern in the face of the contemporary scenario, marked by a ‘longevity revolution’ that, paradoxically, walks side by side with the emptying of meaning in the experience of aging. The central objective of this work is to defend the thesis that old age should not be understood as a residue of adult life or as mere biological decline, but as a legitimate phase of life, endowed with (i) specific psychic tasks, (ii) developmental potentialities, and (iii) its own ontological dignity. To support this proposition, my investigation articulates knowledge from Philosophy, Developmental Psychology (from the life-span perspective), Psychoanalysis (especially Winnicottian), and Historical-Cultural Psychology. In Chapter 1, I dedicate myself to a rigorous conceptual review, seeking to overcome a semantic confusion that, historically, contributed to the pathologization of the elderly. I oppose the reductionist biomedical model, relying, for this purpose, on the life-span perspective to define aging as a lifelong, multidimensional, and multidirectional process, which involves gains and losses, from birth to death. I establish the crucial distinction between aging, this biological-existential process; old age – understood here as a socially and culturally demarcated state –; and the constitution of the elder as the unique subject who inhabits this state. I turn to Simone de Beauvoir to denounce the ‘conspiracy of silence’, which transforms old age into a ‘shameful secret’, arguing that it is both a cultural and biological fact. This conceptual ‘ground clearing’ serves as a basis to affirm that development does not cease at maturity but rather acquires new configurations in the final stage of life. In Chapter 2, I enter the dimension of subjectivity, confronting classical Freudian pessimism regarding the analyzability of the elderly. If Sigmund Freud saw in ego rigidity and the accumulation of mnemonic material obstacles to treatment, I propose a paradigmatic shift towards the work of Donald Woods Winnicott, relying, for this, on the assistance of the Thesis already defended by Flavia Maria de Paula Soares. The central thesis of this chapter is that old age imposes on the subject a task of personal maturation of high complexity: the conquest of the ‘capacity to die’. I argue that health in old age does not lie in the manic maintenance of youthfulness, but in the self’s capacity to perform the movement of ‘integrating the ‘de-integration’’. Unlike pathological disintegration (the fear of breakdown), ‘de-integration’ is the mature acceptance of dependence and the dissolution of the boundaries of the Self, allowing a circular return to the initial state of non-integration, now lived with the wisdom of accumulated experience. For this to occur, however, the presence of a facilitating environment — a ‘clinic of holding’ — is indispensable, one that sustains the subject in the face of the anguish of annihilation and validates their existence until the end. In Chapter 3, I make a dialectical movement from the individual to culture, investigating the role of memory and narrative in the constitution of the elderly subject. Supported by Historical-Cultural Psychology (Vygotsky) and the Social Psychology of Memory (Ecléa Bosi, Halbwachs), I refute the view of memory as a mere neurophysiological archive subject to failure. I argue, with Ecléa Bosi, for the distinction between memory-dream (passive) and memory-work (active). I maintain that the act of remembering in old age is an arduous psychic work of reconstructing the past considering the present, a way of conferring meaning on existence fragmented by time. Autobiographical narrative emerges here not as nostalgia, but as a political act of resistance to ‘social death’ and the identity erasure imposed by consumer society. The elder, by narrating, fulfills the social function of guardian of collective memory and a link between generations, transforming their individual experience into human heritage. Finally, in Chapter 4, theory is confronted with praxis. I present reflections arising from a Professional Internship experience in Psychology within a Long-Term Care Facility for the Elderly (ILPI). In this chapter, I demonstrate how the abstract concepts of holding, perezhivanie (lived experience), and narrative become urgent clinical tools in the care of institutionalized elderly. The account evidences that, even in contexts of frailty and abandonment, the offer of qualified listening allows the subject to rescue their dignity and ‘stitch together’ the pieces of their history. Practice confirms the hypothesis that intervention in old age does not aim at the ‘cure’ of aging, but at sustaining a space in which the subject can continue until they cease to be. The Thesis concludes with the idea that the constitution of a Philosophy and Psychology of Old Age requires abandoning the lenses that see the elder only as a failing body. By integrating the procedural view of development (life-span), the clinical depth of the integration of finitude (Winnicott), and the political dimension of memory (Bosi), I propose an ethics of care that recognizes in the elder a subject of desire and history. Aging, far from being merely the shipwreck of the body, reveals itself as the final stage of a subjective construction, in which the supreme task is to confer meaning on the totality of a life lived, transforming biological destiny into a complete human biography.