Editorial

The theme of this issue is anchored in the disorientation and the lack of possibility for a prognosis regarding the evolution of the current socio-political context. The psychoanalytic perspective on reality, as revealed in the articles published in this issue, seeks to explain ongoing phenomena and thereby reduce the disorientation felt on a social level. Even though war no longer dominates the majority of news space, even though the information reaching us through all communication channels no longer predominantly concerns the reality of war, it cannot be eliminated from the current context. The influences of war are felt both on a global social level and individually. War cannot be thought of, from a psychoanalytic perspective, outside the realm of the death drive, hatred, conflict, or at least the opposition between life and death. In fact, war closely associates death with life, leading to an increase in the intensity of anxieties, the reactivation of past traumas, or the accumulation of new traumas.

In this issue, the authors' reflections on war in all its forms, on the traumas generated by the present or transmitted trans-generationally, based on concrete reality or examples from literature that correspond to the current socio-political situation, offer the possibility of a deep understanding of human nature and the current social context.

In the first article “War or the refusal of conflict”, psychoanalyst C. Athanassiou-Popesco aims to link the origin of war in the human psyche to the death drive. The war is supported by the omnipotence of a part of the psyche that tries to impose its law on the entire psyche. In this circumstance, all other parts of the self are eradicated, and the death drive attempts to prevail over the life drive. The hypotheses put forth in this article are supported by the presented clinical cases.

In the article, “Psychoanalysis as Critical Theory and Diagnosis of the Bad Present (part II)”, G. Civitarese highlights the importance of ps