Envelhecimento e luto: uma visão compreensiva sobre as perdas no processo de envelhecimento

Abstract

The human aging phenomenon has been discussed in several approaches throughout the last decades. However, even if it is understood as a process of the vital cycle, the aging subject still carries different stigmas, conceptions, and generalizations that brings certain difficulty to the understanding beyond the biological reason. Along with this, with the chronological enlargement of the age range known as the elderly, it became important to think about new ways of aging that have become possible. It presents other implications for the losses experienced, giving that formerly, human life spam hardly surpassed the 70 years, and today, the long-lived elders are increasingly common. From that, we have an opening for questioning what to do with said loss in this process and how to care for the remaining life, no longer shortened like before. Thus, in the light of existential phenomenology, given that phenomenology calls into question the naturalness of man, also questioning the naturalness of aging and dying, we intend to reflect and think of aging in this new context and, through reflexive interviewing, understand the expressions of grief arising from the losses experienced in aging. Since dasein understands these processes, it relates uniquely to them. For this, an elderly person over 60 years was interviewed and a reflection was developed to design the possible meanings for such existence, seeking also to investigate the new meanings attributed to aging