Eros and thanathos in the life nurses’ experiences

Abstract

The study concerned with ten nurses memories about rising (EROS) and their experiences with death and dying (THANATOS), since the youngest age, passing through childhood, as students and later as professionals. The study’s nature is qualitative; Otto Rank's psychoanalysis is the theoretical reference, to support the analysis and discussion of nurses’ information. The method used to collect information, was life’s history with approach of anthropological psychoanalysis (Freud, Lévi-Strauss).The collected information led me to identify three nucleus of thought: past remembrance, rising and dying in nurses experiences;present remembrance, the care to terminal client; andfuture expectations, the existence continuity in the nurses conscience.The study’s conclusion indicates the confirmation of talk in respect to the consulted authors’ position, having a flagrant link connection among rising, death and transcendence. Evidence that gives me the opportunity to suggest that, at nursing courses, questions about rising, dying and transcendence may be better broached. It opens a new way to investigate death and it doesn’t end here, just begins a line of research, at psychoanalysis or anthropology used at nursing. Looking for a new way to comprehend death through transcendence, in accordance with Stanislaw Grof's transpersonal psychology conceptions.