Psychoanalysis, Helplessness and Contemporary Violence

Abstract

Contemporary sociability has been marked by institutional insecurity and precarious ties, resulting in multiple forms of violence. This psychoanalytical theoretical essay aims to discuss, from the Freudian critique of the civilizing process, the elaboration of the fundamental helplessness condition today from the work of managing social bonds. It presents the configuration of groups in relation to their ideals to define the failure of symbolic references. It characterizes the conditions of institutional weakening and temporal changes in intersubjective relations to define a social framework of narrativity and historicity deficiency. It discusses subjective mechanisms for dealing with helplessness and its implications of violence and denial of difference. It concludes by rescuing the alteritarian condition through fundamental violence as an ethicalcondition for the establishment of social ties and collective exits to the malaise.