Too much love: institutional care for old age

Abstract

Abstract This paper, which is an exercise in articulating anthropology and psychoanalysis to the study of care for elderly people, is based on an ethnographic case study of an institution caring for the elderly in the city of São Paulo. It seeks to understand the representations of old age, aging and care, and what motivates professionals who provide assistance to the aged. Love, care and attention, understood by professionals and staff as requirements for a good job performance, are designated as donation (gift), regardless of technical knowledge. Recurrent references to both charity (gift) and biomedicine (technique) models, have implications for caring for the aged. For different reasons, both management models converge in a practice in which the elderly appear submitted to the intentions of another. The idea of gift as a supposedly unintentional action reveals care as a power relationship.