THESIS 2020

PLAYING WITH DREAMS: A BRIEF GROUP INTERVENTION BASED ON DREAM CONTENT – A PROPOSAL FOR CHILDREN VICTIMS OF VIOLENCE

Michel Alexandre Fillus

Advisor: Profa. Dra. Liliana Liviano Wahba
Keywords: Child psychotherapy. Violence against children. Dreams. Analytical Psychology.

Abstract: The research aimed at evaluating the effectiveness of a brief group psychotherapeutic play intervention, based on the dreamlike context called Workshop “Playing with dreams” for children victims of violence. The objective was to verify the psychological adaptation of participants from the analysis of expressive projective material and measurements from the Infant Stress Scale (ESI), Abbreviated Wechsler Intelligence Scale (WASI) and Teacher Report Form (TRF/6-18). Psychological adaptation was understood, from a Jungian perspective, in terms of child psychic development linked to an adaptation – internal and external –, made possible by an ego with progressive agency capacity. Research participants were thirty-three children, aged from six to eleven years old, of both sexes, with a history of domestic violence, who were attended by a civil society organization of public interest (OSCIP), in the metropolitan region of Curitiba, State of Paraná. The children were organized into an Experimental Group, to which the intervention resource Workshop “Playing with Dreams” was applied (nine weekly meetings); Placebo group, to which a placebo procedure was applied (nine weekly meetings); and Control Group, which did not receive any intervention during the same period. Participants were tested before and after interventions. The statistical analysis of test results showed a significant decrease in total stress, psychological reactions and psychophysiological reactions and improvement in cognitive skills, with significant results in the Matrix Reasoning subtest and total IQ for the Experimental Group. There was no statistical significance of the results regarding the behaviors evaluated by TRF in the Experimental Group. Qualitative results were observed and evaluated based on children’ play, plastic works, dream reports and verbalizations, in terms of the expression of emotions, conflicts and symbolic contents that pointed to search for protection and ego strengthening. Such expressions were associated with reduction of stress and better cognitive performance, as well as reduction of oppositional and defiant behaviors. The effectiveness of the workshop in improving psychological adaptation was partially verified by the formulated hypotheses, given that the intervention showed to favor the promotion of adaptability in children and their individual capacity for self-agency. Future studies are recommended with the use of the proposed group intervention in order to verify its effectiveness.