Early disruptions in primary caregiving relationships affect the organization of object representations and influence emotional development in childhood. This study investigated how the maternal imago is configured in the psychic life of institutionalized children.
Participants were nine children aged 7 to 11 years living in a child protection service in Northeastern Brazil. The children were not selected for depressive pathology. Instead, apathy, sadness, and inhibition were examined as clinical indicators associated with depressive experience. The research followed a multiple case study design. Two expressive projective procedures were used: the Family Drawing by Corman and collage proposed by Oaklander. The material was analyzed through a psychoanalytic framework articulating Freud's theory of mourning and melancholia, Klein's depressive position, Winnicott's concepts of holding, handling, false self and transitional object, Bion's theory of containment, and Green's notion of the dead mother.
The productions revealed six configurations of the maternal imago organized not as simple absence but as distinct modes of psychic presence. Drawings and collages associated inhibition, sadness, and apathy with specific relational organizations including distant, substitute, idealized, fragmented, ambiguously present, or affectively emptied maternal figures. The findings suggest differentiated internal object organizations through which the child seeks relational continuity despite environmental discontinuities.
The material also presented symbolic activity and reparative gestures, indicating preserved elaborative potential. Projective procedures allowed access to relational experience not readily verbalized and functioned as mediating spaces for expression and meaning construction.
The study contributes to applied psychology and psychoanalytic clinical practice by demonstrating that institutionalized children do not lack maternal representation but organize multiple relational solutions to early affective disruption. Recognition of these configurations may support more precise assessment and the development of caregiving environments capable of sustaining symbolization and emotional integration processes. These patterns offer clinically actionable markers for staff training and for planning interventions that support play, care, and continuity daily.