What form of violence? From the violence of over-simplification to the complexity of violence. A theoretical viewpoint

Beginning with a critique of the concept of gender-based violence as a privileged lens for understanding violence in relationships, and with the aim of opening up useful questions for clinical intervention, the hypothesis of an intimate link between life and violence is proposed, which becomes a psychopathological condition when it is attested as a rigid and exclusive mode of survival of one’s identity structure. In our society, the denial of difference, of femininity, of heteros, produced by a patriarchal culture and the reactive efforts to cope with it, such as the intervention of the politically correct, are an example of this. In this sense, the goal of psychoanalytic intervention confronting “the violent” should be to foster the process of complexification of subjectivity – whether of the patient or of our culture. As analysts, we then have the task of working psychically – within ourselves and in the relationship with the other – to keep violence in dialectical tension with its opposite: tenderness. Making tenderness happen involves investing, with love and dedication, the moments of pause – a potential space between the tension to complexify and the tension to maintain one’s identity. It means, in other words, taking on the experiences that violence evokes as terms of ongoing dialogue with self and other, keeping alive a symbolic thinking that can accompany us in welcoming and transforming it.