Social trauma: The pathogenic effects of untoward social conditions

Abstract

Psychoanalysis has traditionally overlooked the fact that unsuitable and damaging life conditions, originating in the social milieu, play a part in the pathogenesis of emotional suffering and mental disorders. Nonetheless, the self establishes an object relation with the social system, as well as with the non-human environment. This is expected to act as a container–contained relationship. Whenever the community and its institutions fail to act as a container for individuals and groups, this generates a trauma, which can be compared with the baby's experience of a failure in mothering. Such failures can be classified in several categories. The first is when the social system fails to contain, nurture, care for, and protect individuals, as in the case of the lack of assistance and compassion towards the victims of poverty, disease, natural catastrophe, social turmoil, economic crisis, violence, or war. The second category occurs when there is a blatant attack, on the part of the authorities or privileged social groups, on minorities, or even on the bulk of the population, as in the case of social repression, war—both internal and external—racism, genocide, or persecution. The third is when there is a perversion of the social system, which feigns to uphold current social values and laws while actually breaking them, as in the case of corruption, chicanery, and mendacity on the part of the authorities. One recent example of this is the impeachment process against the Chief of Government of Mexico City. The author approaches this problem by exploring the consequences of such experiences for the development and functioning of personality structure and personal relations, as well as their repercussions for individuals living together in the community and for the necessary relation between them and the authorities.

Keywords:

• psychoanalysis
• society
• trauma
• politics

Paper read at the International Meeting “Globalization, Alienation, and Character” Mexican Institute of Psychoanalysis, Mexico City, June 2005.

Paper read at the International Meeting “Globalization, Alienation, and Character” Mexican Institute of Psychoanalysis, Mexico City, June 2005.

Notes

Paper read at the International Meeting “Globalization, Alienation, and Character” Mexican Institute of Psychoanalysis, Mexico City, June 2005.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Reyna Hernández de Tubert

Reyna Herna′ndez de Tubert, M. D. is Training and Supervising Analyst at the Institute of the Mexican Psychoanalytical Association; Member of the International Association for Relational Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy; and author (with Juan Tubert-Oklander) of Operative Groups: The Latin-American Approach to Group Analysis