Psychoanalysis and Social Demand

In a public institution that works with adolescents who have committed infractions and the application of penalties that restrict the freedom of these adolescents, the psychoanalytical concept incompleteness has furnished the basis for an educational project. This same concept of non-wholeness has also been applied in order to explain why certain teenagers adhere to a criminal set of values instead of choosing righteous ones. Psychoanalysis teaches us to work through the demands that are made by our patients so as to bring the unconscious wish to the surface. Our work with these demands conditions the onset of still another demand: the request for clinical treatment. Both social and institutional demands can be treated in a similar way. In this paper, we associate violence with the notion of wholeness, therefore the acknowledgement of vulnerability and lack can actually restrain violence. This is a paradox sustained by psychoanalysis.

Keywords:

• Violence
• Demand
• Incompleteness
• Institution