Anxiety and anguish in admission to a psychology course: rogerian-phenomenological analysis

Abstract

The entrance into the university assumes an adaptive and evolutionary task that involves psychological and contextual factors that can exert positive and/or negative influences at this moment of the student’s career. It is in this sense that the phenomenon of entering higher education can be crossed by anxiety-inducing elements in the management of a university routine. This study aims to understand experiences of anxiety and anguish in the entrance into a Psychology course at a federal university located in the state of Ceará. A semi-structured interview script was employed with four students. The information was analyzed according to the empirical phenomenological method. These axes were discussed considering Carl Rogers' Humanistic Psychology framework to establish a psychological language about the aspects that make up such experiences. The findings point to: a dimension of self-realization in view of the greater freedom that the university space provides; a (self)demand for productivity and university performance that affects the organization of the personality; the existence of academic exhaustion in the first semesters; the establishment of ways to overcome the suffering generated by the academic routine. It concludes with suggestions for future research on the phenomenon.