On brutal gestures
Trauma, destruction, and forms of mental illness
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 8971123 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Nelson Ernesto Coelho Júnior (0000-0002-0707-7356, University of São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil), Eugênio Canesin Dal Molin (0000-0002-7360-0969, Department of Psychoanalysis, Inst. Sedes Sapientiae; COGEAE/PUC-SP; Sándor Ferenczi Brazilian Research Group, São Paulo, Brazil, corresponding author), Renata Udler Cromberg (0000-0001-7419-6067, Department of Psychoanalysis, Inst. Sedes Sapientiae; COGEAE/PUC-SP; Sándor Ferenczi Brazilian Research Group, São Paulo, Brazil) |
| Year | 2023 |
| Volume | 104 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 122-136 |
| Publication date | 2023-01-02 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | The International Journal of Psychoanalysis (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0020-7578 • E-ISSN: 1745-8315 |
| Publisher | Taylor & Francis (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/00207578.2022.2105221 |
| PMID | 36799631 |
| OpenAlex | W4321164076 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 1 |
| References cited | 4 |
The Bohemian writer Milan Kundera narrates, more than once, an experience from his years of life under an authoritarian regime. It is the memory of a violent fantasy of rape, one in which libido and destruction are mingled. Based on this memory and how he wrote about it, we present two forms of mental illnesses (by activation and by passivation) and relate them to the model proposed by Green to think about depressive states through passivation. The first form of mental illness, by activation, is the result of an overly successful active defense against anxiety. The second form, by passivation, is a paradoxical reaction to agony in the face of deadly psychic states. Arguing that this second form of mental illness is frequently identified in individuals during periods of political change, we consider that the intricacy between the drives of destruction and the libido, even when it generates fantasies or brutal gestures, can reveal itself as an episodic attempt of an active defense amid the predominance of passivation generated by post-traumatic helplessness
Anxiety · Cognitive psychology · Learned helplessness · Libido · Mental health · Mental illness · Psychiatry · Psychoanalysis · Recall · Eastern European Communism and Reforms · Literature, Musicology, and Cultural Analysis · Military, Security, and Education Studies · Psychology · Social Psychology
| Unique citing works | 1 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,5 |
| Citation span | 2024 - 2024 (1) |
| Citation velocity | recent |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 1 |