Desamparo: uma análise a partir das primeiras publicações psicanalíticas

Abstract

The term chosen in Brazilian Portuguese for the German word Hilflosigkeit, used by Freud since his early psychoanalytic publications, is "helplessness." In the reading of Freud's work, helplessness can be approached from various perspectives, which maintain certain similarities but differ in the way they emphasize specific aspects originating from different writings of Freud, to outline a concept of helplessness that is distinctly psychoanalytic. In this sense, this work sought to reconstruct the history of the use of the term helplessness in Freud's production, focusing on the early psychoanalytic publications (1892-1900), considered crucial for the development of Psychoanalysis. Its main objective was to analyze the texts from this period, seeking to understand the meaning attributed to the term in each of them, highlighting differences and similarities. For this purpose, a bibliographic survey was conducted, delimiting the productions in which Freud uses the terms Hilflosigkeit and hilflos, along with their possible variations. The works found in this bibliographic research served as guides for the readings and analyses carried out. It aimed to demonstrate that the constitutive elements of the concept of helplessness are already present in Freud's early writings; however, their integration depends on the development of other notions, such as the introduction of narcissism and the death drive, as well as the establishment of the second topic and the theory of angst. The exposition sought to highlight the ubiquity of the term helplessness in Freudian theory, emphasizing the difficulty of circumscribing it and the extent of its consequences for the psyche.