SENTIDOS DE MORTE EM UNIVERSITÁRIOS DO CURSO DE PSICOLOGIA

Abstract

The present article aimed to raise the possible meanings of death present in the population of university students in the Psychology course at the Federal University of Pernambuco, mapping which conceptions of Death appear among these students during their undergraduate course. Psychology training can be understood as a moment of rich learning about life, where students are intimately faced with their subjectivity, values and existential perspectives, therefore, it is important to know how such experiences impact their perspectives regarding death. Fifty-seven undergraduate students (20 female and 37 male) participated in the study, ranging in age from 17 to 45 years, and distributed over 13 academic semesters of the undergraduate course in Psychology at UFPE. The method of analysis of the data collected was carried out through a descriptive psychological phenomenological proposal (Giorgi, 2017), in an attempt to approximate the essences contained in the reports obtained. Four categories of greater representativeness of meaning about death were described, followed by subcategories relevant to the theme, which are: 1.End, containing the subcategories: 1.1 End of an experience and 1.2 End of a physical body; 2. Continuity, with subcategory: 2.1 Life after death; 3. Affective Impact, containing the subcategories: 3.1 Anxious death and 3.2 Mourning; and, 4. Biographical accumulation, with the subcategory: 4.1 Existential meaning. The detected meanings of death dialogue with classic theoretical conceptions of the psychology of death and reflect findings already found among this population in previous studies.

Keywords: death; meaning; college students; psychology; phenomenology.