The sights on living-with the HIV

Abstract

The HIV determines itself to be a virus that goes beyond the provision of immunodeficiency; it’s a nosology that runs through every ambit of an individual, charging him in an existential perspective. With the diagnosis, there is also the experience of the stigmatic state that is to be a person living-with HIV, which when traversing through its world dynamic, that ends up affecting directly its perception-of-itself. With this context, this study is aimed at the comprehension, under the light of Existential-Phenomenological Psychology, of how that people living-with HIV conceive meaning and the understanding of themselves from inside the diagnosis. It was used the phenomenological method of research in psychology by Giorgi, using in the analysis the contributions of Martin Heidegger and Maurice Merleau-Ponty. The phenomenological process was composed of seven audiotaped semi-structured interviews, in conjunction with a field diary and a determined activity called Self Portrait, disposed into three analytical categories. At the end, it was capable of verifying that the participants incorporated the stigma of HIV into their existential dynamic, providing a direct effect on the perception that they establish about themselves, of the others and the world; assuming a more hesitant posture in their relations. However, it doesn’t present itself in a univocal fashion, with the participants presenting a self-perspective that goes beyond the diagnosis, unveiling and comprehending themselves as a project; to rephrase it, capable of designing their experiential progress and as beings with possibilities.