Editorial

The theme of this issue is closely linked to the current socio-political context, namely the issue of war. War, like any conflict, brings along with it the death drive and its manifestations of destructiveness, aggression and hatred. The traumatic consequences of the experience of war affect the psychological functioning of the individual. Those directly involved in the conflict are not the only to suffer, as those who feel threatened by the possible extension of the conflict also do. We know that events in reality are triggers for intra-psychic predispositions, and war is such an event with great potential for harm. Exposure to such a context activates ways of defending ourselves that we did not suspect or that we have long given up, such as primary defences. The authors of the articles in this issue address all these topics.

Marilia Aisenstein, in her article Destruction of thought-processes, examines the problem of destructiveness from the perspective of a process of thought-destruction that leads to different forms of destruction: external, internal, social, political and even bodily destruction. This process of thought-process destruction is described as based on the splitting of the self, the surrender to an absolute authority perceived as dangerous, and the surrender of the ability to think in terms of “I” which the author calls conformist dementalisation. The proposed clinical material relates to analytic labour with a psychosomatic patient.

The problem of group identity and the effects of historical traumas that have not been psychologically metabolised, not symbolised, on the construction of this identity is discussed by Daniela Andronache, in the article Running over border, running to the border. Large group identity and historical undigested trauma within the Romanian population at the beginning of the third millennium. The paper proposes a psychoanalytic investigation of the Romanian group psyche in terms of Prof. Dr. Vamir Volkan's conceptual descriptio