Estudo psicológico das narrativas de weblogs pró-anorexia (pró-ana)

Abstract

This study investigate the narratives found in weblogs pro-anorexia, or “pro-ana”, as the same authors and readers call them. Such weblogs, or blogs, are virtual journals whose authors narrate a quotidian full of practices, ideas, feelings and behaviors, that in short, resembles the one found in patients with anorexia nervosa. The main idea on these narratives is that practices such as - fast, rigorous diets, use of drugs, tips to evade the responsible and doctor’s attention - configure a valid and eager path to achieve a state described as “perfect”, represented by an extremely thin body. Although the authors not always consider themselves as anorexics or identify the term pro-ana with eating disorder, media, public opinion and the medical institution tend to quickly classify them as suffering from anorexia nervosa and accuses them of spreading and encourage such pathology. Arising around the year 2000, proana blogs are a relevant phenomenon. Born into a specifically contemporary spatial modality – the cyberspace - the pro-ana phenomenon merges communication and technology with current culture, which encourages a kind of a cult of the body and appearance. This study aims to understand the pro-ana narratives, manly through theoretical and methodological instruments of Gustav Jung's analytical psychology. That means dealing with the narrative's symbolic dimension, always considered in its polysemy and indispensably correlated, dynamically, to the social and cultural environment in which they operate. Therefore, a psychopathological reading is not been made, since such path has been commonly the one most trodden by those whose so far have pored over into this subject matter. By allowing proana narratives to been understood without the barriers imposed by labels, meanings, values and implications beyond those derived from simple diagnosis were obtained. The pro-ana shadow relates to the social substrate as a kind of caricature that, by forcing the characteristics trait commonly accepted and aspired to the point of making them bizarre, summons the collective consciousness to reflection about its own paradigm