Children’s narratives as a symbolic resource: a psychoanalytical perspective

Abstract

This article consists of an integrative literature review of an exploratory qualitative nature that aims to understand, from a psychoanalytic perspective, how fairy tales can be a therapeutic tool for children’s emotional development. The contents are organized into an introduction, methodology, results and discussion, which brings together the articles and their theoretical discussion, first addressing the conception of childhood and the emergence of fairy tales through history, followed by the characterization of the child psyche from a psychoanalytic perspective and then the application of fairy tales in the clinical context, finally, the conclusion points out the main findings and final considerations. For the production of the research, the PRISMA recommendations were used, and articles were collected from the SciELO and BVS databases, the content of the articles included was evaluated according to the specific objectives of the research. The results show a historical relationship between the emergence of fairy tales as a literary style and the concept of childhood throughout the ages, the presence of psychic phenomena of symbolization, continence and elaboration through identification, or just contact, mediated by a narrator, with fairy tales. Furthermore, the use of narratives in a clinical context with children makes it possible to work through emotional conflicts, especially those related to abandonment. The conclusion is that fairy tales have proved effective as a resource for children’s emotional development, as they are a way of symbolizing emotions, relieving anguish and fantasizing their own version of the stories.