Todos precisam de uma família? : o acolhimento institucional e os discursos que o sustentam

Abstract

This research investigates, from a psychoanalytical perspective, the place that the family occupies not only in the public policies that aim protection of childhood and adolescence but also in the speech of those who operate such policies, with emphasis on institutional care home or shelter. The research identified a specific model of family, nuclear family, as a regulator of relationships between children, shelter s employees and State, due to the appearance of new forms of parental bonding and the impossibility to reproduce the family model in the institutional environment. The historical analysis revealed that the nuclear family model has constituted itself as a modulator of social relations. This model, centered on the triad father-mother-son, seems to be a reference to the constitution of the shelter institutions and appears as imaginary dimension, which serves as the core support of law and institutional functioning. Given the role of the nuclear family in society and in the individual´s structure, we analyze the new forms of family configuration and how they indicate the decline of the nuclear family. Then, two possibilities for understanding the emotional attachment in the institutional environment are presented: a vertical one, based on reproduction of parenting by the nuclear model, and another one, horizontal, based on fraternal bond.