AGING AND SUBJECTIVITY: EXPERIENCES IN PSYCHOLOGY WITH GROUPS OF ELDERLY

Abstract

Over the past decades, many studies have pointed to the growing process of the ageing population. In Brazil, there is a prediction that by 2020 our country will have the sixth largest elderly population in the world. In several Brazilian cities, the number of inhabitants over 60 reaches significant levels. Given this phenomenon, several challenges exist for public policies, society and the university in the production of knowledge and new practices for intervention with this demand. Thus, this paper reports the experience of two group activities developed with the group "Ageing Processes and Subjectivity" at Universidade Estadual Paulista (UNESP), Campus of Assis, coordinated by a faculty member and composed of twelve undergraduate apprentices in Psychology. The experience seeks to provide Psychology apprentices a training that will enable them to articulate the knowledge production with the construction of new strategies for professional work with the ageing population. Group activities are developed with the elderly, either institutionalized or not, and aim to promote intervention strategies that may produce the expansion of the subjectivity of the elderly, in order to combat the social isolation that many are submitted and also to promote (re)significations of the ageing process. To achieve this end, it is offered two different weekly activities, each one hour and a half long. One of them is the "Psychology Workshops with Senior nursing home residents", which includes the participation of about 30 individuals from two nursing homes in Assis (SP). In these workshops we develop sense and perception and activities of the expansion of mobility along with meetings that seek to foster memories and life stories of nursing home residents and activities that promote sociability among them, both within the campus and in the spaces of the city. The other group, "Encounters with the Third Age", is part of a project called University Opened to the Third Age (UnATI) of UNESP, Assis, which has about 50 participants aged over 60 years, mostly women. In this group, various topics related to ageing are discussed and its impact on the construction of subjectivity, such as gender, family, feelings and senses of the body and other processes. Our work with institutionalized old people, together with the academic purpose of creating knowledge while acting together with the external community, has led to the development of new tools of action in psychology beyond the traditional medical model. Moreover, these group experiences have also been seen as a strategic place in order to question the logic of invalidating the ageing person perceived on the social scene as well as among the elderly themselves. We observed that, when stimulated, they rediscover their capacity to reflect, criticize and ponder on various subjects, and may produce subjective processes more potentiated in their contact with others.