Análise Comportamental do Sonhar: Integração de Estudos e Investigação Empírica de Sonhos de Grávidas

Abstract

Dreams and their meanings are phenomena that, in general, have always instigated and attracted people. In Psychology, the importance of dreams in different theoretical systems is discussed, showing, in some more than in others, the therapeutic aspect of the analysis/interpretation of this phenomenon for the understanding of the dreamer's actions, thoughts and emotions. This thesis has the general objective of identifying how behavior analysis studies dreams and analyzing the function of dreaming that occurs during intercurrent pregnancy. To fulfill it, she presents two studies on dreams from a behavior-analytic perspective. In the first study, with the aim of integrating studies on dreams into Behavior Analysis, analyzing and discussing their methods and conclusions, an integrative literature review was carried out, seeking to add the way in which the theme dream is presented by behavior analysts. The Virtual Health Psychology Library (BVSpsi), Google Scholar, Portal Periódicos CAPES and SciELO databases were searched, and the resources found were analyzed using descriptive methods, in order to methodologically understand the analysis of dreams in the behavioral-analytic clinic. The interpretation of the results was carried out in a comparative way. The results highlighted the national literature, demonstrating that there was a consensus among the articles about the importance of dream analysis in behavioral psychotherapy, with the main gain being the expansion of the client's repertoire of selfknowledge. The notion is shared that dreams are covert behaviors that manifest themselves during sleep and can only be made accessible to others through the client's verbal report (verbal behavior). Therefore, analyzes and generalizations of dream analyzes and dream reports must take into account the peculiarities of the contingencies of reinforcement of both these behaviors: dreaming and dream reporting. In the second study, with the objective of functionally evaluating dreaming during pregnancy with the presence of complications, a study of multiple cases of pregnant women aged over 18 years was carried out. In it, psychological follow-up sessions of pregnancy and dream analysis were conducted, in order to assess the function of dreaming: description, from the oneiric narrative, of the relationship between environmental variables and the behavior of pregnant women (this relationship is based on contingencies that could have acted in the acquisition and maintenance of their emotional behavior, of which the dream was part). The results of this analysis allow us to verify that the dream can be considered behavioral clinical material with the same status as others brought by the client, being incorporated into the set of collected data, in a function unified by the context, in these cases, pregnancy with complications. The complication exacerbates the emotional changes typical of pregnancy and the same contingencies that elicit them exert control over the dreaming behavior, highlighting the changes that characterize the ambivalence of emotions. The complication seems to modulate the emotion of pregnant women, which is elicited more intensely with the proximity of childbirth and the new routine of life as a mother. It is concluded by the reiteration of the affirmation of the dream production from the behavioral history in the three levels of selection of this behavior, it being the opportunity for the emergence of emotional behavior, with its behavioral nature (perceptive, mediated by verbal, motor and emotional responses), under the control of reinforcement contingencies, like any other overt or covert behavior.