What is this desire? Reproductive decisions among women living with HIV/Aids from a psychoanalysis perspective

Abstract

We conducted a qualitative study to understand how women living with HIV/Aids realize their reproductive decisions and characterize their unconscious desire. In-depth interviews were conducted with 15 adult women, in an infectious diseases hospital and in a non-governmental organization. We constructed the interviewees' life trajectories following thematic type oral history. Moreover, in the psychoanalytic theoretical framework, we refer to the concepts of imaginary identification and symbolic identification to reveal aspects of unconscious desire. The interviewees' discourse showed contradictions and unconscious logic underlying their reproductive decisions, and pregnancy, in this context, is intended to restore narcissistic injuries, as their goal is to generate seronegative offspring. Another contradiction is that they evaluate the reproductive decisions of other HIV-positive women as "madness" or "irresponsibility" as they seek to justify their own desire and run away from responsibilities concerning reproductive decisions. Thus, a contribution of psychoanalysis to the public health field is the inclusion of the subject's idiosyncrasies and enabling the recovery of the singularity of the unconscious desire, besides allowing a reflection of these issues in comprehensive care, which, after all, can affect the complex needs of women living with HIV/Aids.