Experience, internalization,and repetition

Abstract

The interface, at which outer reality and unconscious fantasies should integrate, can hardly be developed. A chaotic environment, permeated by misery and violence, does not serve as a supportive container for the child’s impulses. During the work in the slums, it became clear for the author and his co-workers that even in very miserable living conditions, the interaction between outer events and the personal psychic structure determines the individual’s history.

Equating individual fate with nature of the outer circumstances, the former becomes immutable. In this context C. Rodriguez Rabanal approaches this phenomenon from the viewpoint of the psychoanalytic conflict model. He presents several examples: violence in connection with magical concepts, psychotherapy with a drug dealer in a European prison, and omnipotence fantasies in an isolated guerilla unit.

In each case it is shown how the dynamic of a nonintegrated reality manifests itself in violence against both perpetrators and their victims, and how the perpetrators change when this becomes conscious.

The conclusion: Efforts to fight against poverty and misery inadequately consider the emotional dimension. The continuity of development as a consequence of the therapeutic effort is always disturbed when it is not possible to counteract the existing dissociative processes in both the individual and the collective.

Keywords:
Traumatization, violence, social violence, external reality, omnipotence, internalization of impotence