Psychoanalysis and social violence: Civilization and Its Discontents revisited

Introduction

Does psychoanalysis have the conceptual and clinical tools to understand social violence and collective traumatic events? How does social violence impact on the psyche? How can any social violence be worked with in the consulting room? Should one be searching for new concepts to articulate a deeper understanding of social processes?

In his introduction to Janine Puget’s and Yolanda Gampel’s papers in this issue, Jorge Canestri says the following:

There are many good reasons for deciding to publish the translation into English of two psychoanalytic works on “social subjectivity” or “social pain”. The first reason, as is customary for our Journal, is the interest and originality of the papers; secondly, the complexity of a topic that invites reflection; thirdly, and not lastly, their relevance to the present time. This relevance corresponds, unfortunately, to the many examples that trigger social pain today: from wars to dictatorships, from forced migrations to the state of our planet, from inequality to epidemics. (this issue, 1215)

In both texts, the authors seek an answer to what they both consider to be missing in psychoanalytic theory: how to define the concepts of “social”, “social subjectivity”, “social pain” and “the pain of the social”?

These two celebrated authors have published widely on subjects pertaining to traumatic political events that provoke pain and suffering. Janine Puget was born in France but moved to Argentina; Yolanda Gampel was born in Argentina and emigrated to Israel. Both have undergone traumatic experiences and have treated patients who had lived through terrorizing political and social regimes. Puget speaks from the perspective of trying to work analytically during the period of the dictatorship in Argentina. Gampel lives and works in Israel and has become a key figure in psychoanalysis with her work with survivors of the Holocaust – the Shoah, in Hebrew, which is the way I refer to it from now on.

Canestri highlights some of the