This paper aims to expand the reflection on the care of elder people inspired by the text "Patterns of intersubjectivity in the constitution of subjectivity: dimensions of otherness," published in 2004 by Nelson Coelho Jr. and Luis Claudio Figueiredo. Through the use of the aforementioned concept in dialogue with the ideas of empathy in Ferenczi, projective identification in Klein and radical alterity in Lévinas, we intend to show how the contributions of psychoanalysis and philosophy allow questioning the notion of care as linked to charity and love that can lead to the subjection of the elderly. In contrast, we propose an understanding of care in which elderly and caregivers are in a multifaceted inter-subjective relationship that implies tensions and possibilities of transformation without losing sight of the ethical background in which both are respected in their idiosyncrasies and differences.Keywords: Elderly. Care. Aging. Psychoanalysis. Ethics.
Aging and careBrazil finds itself in a period of demographic transformation that begets familiar, social and political changes. From 1980 to 2005, the senior population growth was 126.3%, while the total population growth was only 55.3%. In the same period, the segment of 80 years old or more presented a growth of 246%, representing 14% of the elderly Brazilian population. The longevity implies in an increase in the number of dependent senior and caring personnel, being them formal (that exercise caring in a professional situation) or informal (relatives that exercise the caring profession without remuneration). Due to the lack of financial resources and of a COMUNICAÇÃO SAÚDE EDUCAÇÃO 2017; 21(62):579-88 assistance network that offers care service for free, most of the elderly in Brazil are given care by women from their family (c) , most of the times being old themselves, with no preparation for this kind of job and without a network that provides support so that they can offer quality care to the relatives that rely on them 1 .Departing from this wider context, it is possible to direct our look to a more limited scenario: the dependent senior and the caregiver. The dependence degree of a senior is valued according to his capacity to execute daily life activities (DLA), which are divided in: (1) basic activities in daily life -self-caring tasks; (2) instrumental tasks of daily life -indicatives of the capacity for an independent life such as doing domestic tasks, managing his own medication, handling money; and (3) advanced tasks in daily life -indicatives of more complex acts connected to self-motivation, such as work, recreational activities, physical exercise. The dependence translates itself as indispensable help to the achievement of elementary deeds in life 3 .The dependence for DLA can be reduced if there is adequate assistance, for example, with house adaptation or use of technology. However, when feeling as a dependent, the individual gets in touch with feelings of fragility and abandonment related to an unstable physical condition that implies a risk ...
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