Cómo construirse un hombre. Un caso clínico de arteterapia con un joven con síndrome de Down y conflicto en la identidad de género

Abstract

This article presents an art therapy experience with a young man with Down syndrome, who manifests, from his adolescence, gender identity crisis. Starting from the theories of Donald Winnicott on the development of the sense of identity in the subject, we begin by exposing a theoretical body, which allows the reader to understand the difficult construction of identity and the false self in people with intellectual disabilities.

In the clinical case analysis, we can observe how the patient can give shape to everything that remains undefined inside, building an image of himself. We work together in the complex search of our own identity, which allows us to take over a genre that continues in process. In the course of the sessions, the patient has been able to conquer their own spaces and establish access bridges with the subjective, in addition to appropriating their thinking and finding a subjective representation of himself: a unique way to be and present himslef to others.