What is friendship? Do we all understand, more or less, the same? Is it a link or just a characteristic of some people? Is there harmony between what we feel and think or contradictions, is friendship just an idea? Is it something about which nothing can be asserted, you only live in the same way you love? Is it a necessity, an implicit pact for the interactions to be beneficial or something human that emerges as surplus value? Does it exist or is it a fantasy? Why so many questions!
Friendship is as important as any other factor or component of what we usually refer to as "daily life" or the "vicissitudes of life." For this reason, in this investigation there is also violence that, even as indifference, inaction or laziness, contradicts the feeling or desire for well-being that friendship brings us.
What is violence? Do we all understand, more or less, the same? Again… Why so many questions! Anyway, let's try to see what happens today…
The effort of many thinkers to define friendship or provide details about violence, as well as the literary productions that attempt to account for them, inevitably have to include certain contrasts and problems that, ultimately, refer to productions of a human universe made of symbols There is a "bid" or a "dilemma" that has become persistent. Still, today, the controversies between objectivity and subjectivity continue to dissipate the energy available to test more appropriate and radical changes. This shows us that there are serious difficulties in approaching and building a less violent and more friendly world.
There is something captivating 1, hidden in the middle of so much modernity. We know that violence is something that can be reproduced, but friendship seems to never have such a replica or power. It is as if, over time, the best of humanity has been postponed to follow the whim of some paradigms or to give rise to a promise of well-being that, in reality, never ends. The person best adapted to the time seems to rest in a comfortable complacency or in a comfortable resignation, the less adapted is doomed to disappear in many and varied ways.
The friendship-violence complex, with its ambivalences, challenges us. The more we get involved, the better we understand it, and vice versa…
Analyzing friendship as a "type of bond" and violence as the expression of a "passive or anomalous adaptation" to the current concrete conditions of life, focusing on a subject who is the product and producer of his reality, with a " criterion of truth ”that will consist of operability, I will try to highlight that it is possible to access a“ new subjectivity ”from the same“ social praxis ”(so controversial or dilemmatized), as to promote a certain transcendence (eccentricity 2 as openness and ease) that facilitate the understanding and richness of diversity.
Philosophizing from friendship
According to Voltaire 3, friendship is an unspoken contract made by two sensitive and virtuous people. In his "Philosophical Dictionary" he relates it to love, a "not very philosophical matter" and writes: "Love is a fabric that embroiders the imagination (…). It is an I don't know what made up of all this, a confused feeling similar to fantastic passions (…) "
Kant 4 only admits one type of friendship, one to which we should all aspire, which is the one that corresponds to the autonomy of the will. By being governed by moral principles we choose friendship, if we follow practical or material principles we would only seek to be happy without caring about others. It distinguishes between needy friendship or needs (one that responds to the satisfaction of vital needs), aesthetic friendship or taste (a pseudo-friendship, founded on the satisfaction of treatment and mutual company) and affective friendship (based on intention and feelings). He affirms that there is some objection when issuing a judgment, due to the existing coercion. But there are people with whom that disappears, when there is a “friend” from whom nothing can or should be hidden.
Nietzsche 5 questions that, if we are friends, we should not be tolerant and compassionate towards each other just because there is something like "love of neighbor", because that would make us take refuge in others. It would be a way of "living tightly", which would make us love others but not love ourselves. A true friend knows and dares to confront us, it makes us uncomfortable: "In our friend we must have our best enemy" This means that only the honest, the one who is sure of himself, is the one worthwhile. The friend is there to fight against our ignorance and fears, we must learn from true or good friends.
Blanchot 6 says: “Friendship, that relationship without dependence, without episode and where, nevertheless, all the simplicity of life fits, passes through the recognition of the common strangeness (…) that fundamental separation from which what separates becomes relationship. Here, discretion does not consist in the simple refusal to take into account confidences (how crude it would be, even dreaming about it), but it is the interval, the pure interval that, from me to that other who is a friend, measures everything. that there is between us, the interruption of being that never authorizes me to dispose of him, nor of my knowledge about him (even if it were to praise him) and that, far from preventing all communication, relates us to each other in difference and sometimes silence of the word. "" Eternal Geometer "
Dominguez Morano 7, in his book "The records of desire", begins by arguing: "It is the most universal bond. (…) Inescapably, it needs to enter into what psychoanalysis has understood as the process of sublimation. ”. He asks himself: “What conditions would we have to demand as a minimum so that we could really speak of friendship? What elements would we have to consider as essential for a friendship relationship to be able to exist and be maintained as such? He maintains that there is no friendship without the intervention of desire. A basic impulse that moves us towards reducing the distance and the difference that constitutes us from our condition of "being separate." The "maturation of desire" (in different stages or identifications) will facilitate the friendship relationship, as an ethical dimension of openness and commitment to otherness.In his attempt to delimit the concept of friendship, he writes: “If there is no freedom, there is no friendship, and if once established, freedom is endangered, the friendship itself is immediately threatened. (…) Also gives rise to regret over distance, to suffering from frustration and conflict, to disappointment and the possibility of rupture, to open pain due to the loss of the loved object, whether due to the loss of trust or the material loss of the friend. (…) But if freedom is its specific terrain and desire is its seed and its potential for growth, its best fruit will be ethical commitment. (…) Capacity for delivery, donation, and even, if necessary, the possibility of sacrifice and resignation.(…) Falling in love is impregnated with Eros (…) It seeks the union of bodies as a means of erasing the distance and the difference that constitutes us. Friendship, however, tries to cover the distance that separates us in a different way: through participation in ideas, feelings, common projects. She finds in the word, in the gesture and in the participatory silence her means of communion. "
Dewey 8 takes friendship as an "aesthetic experience" The experience of orphanhood or loneliness is offset by friendships. An act of love that does not die with distance, contrary to erotic passion. Friends are the cure of the passing of the years, they are the consolation for old age.
Sartre 9in his work “Being and Nothingness”, in “Freedom and Factuality: The Situation”, he writes: “The decisive argument used by common sense against freedom consists in reminding us of our impotence. Far from being able to modify our situation at will, it seems that we cannot change ourselves. (…) The adversity coefficient of things is such that it takes years of patience to obtain the smallest result. And yet it is necessary to 'obey nature in order to command his', that is, to insert my action into the meshes of determinism. More than what seems to be 'made', man seems to 'be made' by climate and land, race and class, language, the history of the community of which he is a part, inheritance, individual circumstances of his childhood, acquired habits,the small or big events of your life. ”. Faced with this, he argues: “The adversity coefficient of things, in particular, cannot constitute an argument against our freedom, because for us, that is, by the prior position of an end, that adversity coefficient arises. This rock, which shows deep resistance if I want to move it, will be, on the contrary, a precious help if I want to climb it to contemplate the landscape. "a precious help if I want to climb it to contemplate the landscape. "a precious help if I want to climb it to contemplate the landscape. "
Levinas 10 thinks of friendship as “putting oneself in the hands of the other”. Believe in the opening and the reunion of otherness. "Being in itself is nothing, but it is what makes things be" According to Marta Lopez Gil 11, she proposes that the greatness of man occurs to the extent that he can be fascinated by the other. “That is to say, as if the other bewitches me and produces in me - and only in this way can I welcome the other - an extreme passivity that does not support any activity, but is an abandonment. Levinas does not want the greatness of man's being as a relation to being - like Heidegger 12- strongly objects. She believes that greatness is abandoning oneself to the other, to anyone else. And perhaps, in that abandoning himself to the other, he can be welcomed, although he does nothing more than recognize, always, that it is inherent to man to want us to be all the same (…) What Levinas feels is so strong that he does not want a reciprocal relationship, you want a relationship where you can say, 'I'm not me.' There is no me versus another me. That self is selfishness, and the whole self in front of another self inevitably leads to confrontation. I have to disappear as a self, there has only to be that feeling of abandoning myself (…). Levinas wants that from the ontological point of view -that is, from the point of view of man's being- man put aside his egoism, his character as a subject for which everything else is an object. He wants me to put aside rulescommandments in which it remains an autonomous subject. He wants me to leave all autonomy, that is, everything to regulate itself; let him abandon all return to himself. He wants to make the self disappear and he wants each of us to become hostages to the other. (…) This impossibility of friendship occurs precisely because friendship exceeds us, that is, there is an excess. To think about it, you have to place yourself in a field not of ethics, but of mystery and excess.you have to place yourself in a field not of ethics, but of mystery and excess. "you have to place yourself in a field not of ethics, but of mystery and excess. "
Derrida 13, in "Politics of Friendship," writes: "How could a brother be subject to absolute hostility? The hypothesis will have to be inverted. There is only absolute hostility for a brother. And the history of friendship is only the experience of what, in this perspective, looks like an unspeakable synonymy, a deadly tautology. " It alludes to Carl Schmitt's vision 14 (friends-enemies dichotomy) about the history of modernity, represented as a tragedy. A time of decadence and ruin, where politics fades, frustrating the promise of order. The fragility of liberal structures is exposed and with it elements appear against “depoliticization”. Rorty 15 writes about Derrida: "aspires to a time when man and woman can be friends, a time when we have overcome" virile homosexuality that is intimately related to phallocentric metaphysics "
Fernado Broncano 16He has a blog where he writes about Love: “It is a bond that links the whole of the person and not some of their masks or roles, that establishes a kind of unconditionality that only perhaps friendship follows closely, which is in the bone of the human experience and that, therefore, is as desirable as it is fearsome ”. He says that friendship "emits a kind of promise:" I will always be there, for when you need me "," you do not have to explain me, I am your friend "," you know about my defects, but I am counting on your friendship ". He also maintains that: “Friendship is a kind of unconditional sympathy with the story of the other. Corrupted by the misuse of social media, friendship is a bond that can only be established with a few people. When it is presumed that 'he is my friend', one suspects that there is no link there other than interest. Friendship,more than love, it is selfless. That is why we would like, and why it is so difficult, to be friends with the people we love. "
Lopez Petit 17In his book “Between being and power”, he writes: “The articulation being-power-nothing is a way of ordering in which we have always been inserted. The passage from self-position to disposition, speech, is our word deployed within it. It is the image in the mirror -although an active image- of this order, the permanent music that does not give up. Valley and river. Basin opened by the river that, in turn, is traced by it. Today, in the metropolis, the valley has become desert and the river highway. Music is the persistent roar of cars chasing each other, it is simple repetition. (…) New technologies, incessant fashions, we seem to be flying towards a new continent in which everything will be different. But it is not clear that something new is happening. In fact, one would have to doubt whether it happened as such.Power continually mediates between disorder and order, and does so by putting itself in its fading. The center disappears and the limits become indeterminate. And this event in which the circular desert is reproduced, disappears in its own repetition. (…) Conjunction between social control and production of differences. (…) Systemic integration is based on the disenchanted individual who reduces self-awareness to self-worship ”
A few other thinkers and scholars could be cited, but it is enough to understand how committed the issue of friendship is to the issue of violence. Human development or social prosperity depend on the management of violence and this management of the amount of anxieties of the subjects (fears, real or fantasized, that make us anticipate situations loaded with affections). They are basic mechanisms about which there is hardly any reflection.
Falling into violence
Each era has its epicenters, from which countless concerns spread. The background of this seems to always be a certain “symbolic violence”, something that shakes our “mental schemes” 18 and shocks 19 at the bodily level. Today, luckily, we can talk about her, albeit as one more guy. Perhaps, later, it will be admitted how structural it is. But… What is "symbolic violence"? "The one that, through stereotyped patterns, messages or signs, transmits and produces domination, inequality and discrimination in social relationships, naturalizing subordination." twenty
For Bourdieu 21, who spread the term several decades ago, takes the form of "male domination" which, far from being exercised by men over women, is a process that affects without distinction of gender. It is part, in modern societies, of the systematic and invisible reproduction of the effects generated by the asymmetry that power introduces (there is something that we could designate as "the game of power", altering human life). When we are born and develop in a social environment, we incorporate postulates and axioms that do not need to be inculcated, because we are immersed in a field that overdetermines us (habitus), that imposes a way of acting on us, imparts to us a thinking and feeling associated with "Social position" or "lifestyle". Thus, it is almost impossible for us to realize that these matrices or schemas exist,so that we question them or we can say something about what happens to us. There is a certain adhesion that becomes the naturalization of such a relationship of domination. "Practical faith is the right of entry that all fields impose on newcomers, so that the doxa is internalized as the original belief of its fundamental presuppositions."
"Power is everywhere." We must only "make the invisible visible" (Foucault 22).
Habermas 23he wrote about "the colonization of the world of life by social systems." He understands that social change must take place in a symbolic sphere, it favors communication and understanding between subjects. At present, we can think of a “fragmentation of symbolic universes”. Space and time do not appear well defined and collective representations cannot be legitimized from any ideology. He also wrote, in an article entitled “The End of a Utopia” in 1984: “The exemplary character of the past, based on which the present could be guided without reservation, vanishes. The devaluation of the past and the need to obtain normative principles from one's own experiences and modern ways of life explain the change in the structure of the "spirit of the age", which receives impulses from two antagonistic sources:historical thought and utopian thought. (…) This insertion of utopian energies in the historical consciousness characterizes the spirit of the time, which since the days of the French Revolution has been shaping the political public space. (…) But today it seems as if the utopian energies have been consumed, as if they have abandoned historical thought. (…) I do not consider this thesis founded according to which what we are witnessing is the irruption of a postmodern era. What is changing is not the structure of the spirit of the times, it is not the mode of the dispute over the possibilities of life in the future. (…) What we are witnessing is, rather, the end of a certain utopia of utopia, which in the past crystallized around the society of work ”. In this regard, he maintains: “it is therefore presupposed that,through state interventions, a peaceful coexistence between democracy and capitalism can be ensured. " Among the consequences he describes, he refers to the fact that: “The emancipated way of life, more worthy of man, is no longer thought of as a direct result of a revolution in labor relations, that is, of a transformation of heteronomous work into activity autonomous. Despite this, the reformed labor relations also continue to maintain a central significance in this project: they become a point of reference not only for the measures aimed at humanizing a job that continues to be heteronomous, but, above all, as a point of influence for compensatory benefits that are intended to absorb the fundamental risks of salaried work (accidents, illness,job loss and helplessness in old age). "
The speeches of José Mujica 24 keep a thought that summarizes the current struggle between “tendencies” that we can classify as “power relations” and “trust relations”: Nothing and nobody, in any corner of the world, remains oblivious to all these details So… What connections are there between what I have described here as “friendship” and “this current violence”? Is there any other point of view, something that allows us to envision other possibilities, will there be something else apart from the cited notes or complementary to those positions?
It is important to understand that none of this happens without our intervention (whether we know it or not, whether we want to or not). If we really want the groups to be operational or for solidarity and other values to reappear firm and impetuous, we are going to have to make friends with the term "community action." Rather, we should change the hegemonic sense given to this socialization process on which humanity is based. In other words, from everyday life, start to abandon modesty or cultivated fear of diversity.
Apparently, "humanizing" is to continue insisting on vital aspects, rather than on economic or political freedoms. With dignity and equity, rediscovering friendship or living affection openly, facing violence. Because, of course, this dare to operate on the affectations is equivalent to revealing violent events or resorting to transcendent senses, overcoming silence, the unspeakable or unnameable. It is to draw the veils of any formal logic, anti-erotic ethics or sense that threatens the global quality of life or human integrity. It is not an ethical or moral issue, but something rooted in the human, it is what best defines us…
Why? It is evident that, from the middle of the 20th century to date, there is no science, technology or religion that can with such violence. Because, out of pride or wickedness, out of complacency or naivety, out of indifference or corruption, out of rigidity or inertia, these “systems” reproduce it. In other words, all of us reproduce it, to a greater or lesser extent, physically or in a silent and alienating way. They are circumstances that are not in our nature or do not come from our human character, but rather have to do with cultural products (including ourselves) of "a society" that depends on the subjectivity of the moment, on the "symbolic management" that it projects onto what we designate as "reality" (reality that inevitably includes us).
Changing optics or praxis
My reading of the context is through everyday life. I did not study or study cases, I observe and use what I read in books and publications, but I leave enough room for informalities and other jargon. That is, I observe with a look that tries not to stay with appearances, that wants to penetrate the obvious, that seeks to see how the news fits with local cultures, knowledge and facts together with global ones, how I fit myself…
In this regard, I am going to argue that it is possible to access a "new subjectivity", from the same "social praxis" that is, apparently, in crisis.
Rivière pigeon 25he refers to the crisis as "the prelude to all subjective structural change". Modern subjectivity is susceptible to change. There is an alteration of the subject's referential scheme and this promotes a series of experiences that reactivate basic fears (loss of the known and attack of the new). Someone who is in crisis falls prey to his fantasies. In such a subject the contradiction between the life project and the resistance to change becomes more acute. What is thought, what is felt and what is done is dissociated. Daily manifestations are experienced with strangeness, there is a certain dislocation and strategies cannot be developed. Only from a bonding support and a social praxis can the subject restructure itself. It is a process that requires active participation, as well as containment and recognition of differences.
Responses to social or human problems depend more on "practical changes" than on scientific formalities or statistical measurements. They are not postulates or hypotheses, nor norms or methods, resources to be available and used. One has knowledge and relies on their knowledge but, 25 Enrique Pichon Rivière (1907 - 1977). Psychiatrist, creator of a Social Psychology characterized by its ECRO (Conceptual Operational Reference Scheme), although it is better known for the “operative group” technique. Swiss, nationalized Argentine, considered one of the introducers of Psychoanalysis in Argentina.
many times, you have to improvise or innovate. This is another type of learning, they are other resources that are evidenced when, in the situations themselves, “the habitual references disappear” or “the papers are burned” 26. Praxis that was lost, first by scientism and, later, by modern technocentrism.
Freire 27 conceives of praxis as the indissoluble between reflection and action. “To exist humanly is to pronounce the world, it is to transform it. Men are not made in silence, but in words, in work, in action and reflection. "
Let's say that, here, we are positioning ourselves in other areas and not in the academics of theories and practices. Thus, we would have to arrive at other interpretations, as if to begin to untangle the complexity hidden in operating on everyday life, because that is where the inquiry, through criticism and cooperation, will be fruitful.
Praxis is not basic or applied knowledge, it is not technology or framework or device. It is manipulation of knowledge and technologies, it is the way to use or apply the available means. It is what the subject does with what she has and how she can…
Symbolic friendship
We can speak, as in the case of violence, of a symbolic friendship: The one that, through related features, messages or signs, transmits and produces harmony, equity or integration in social relationships, strengthening condescending attitudes towards life.
It occurs to me to quote Camus 28 and Fontanarrosa 29. I know it's not the best of ideas, but let's admit some parallelism regardless of content, character, time, or distance. Let's see some phrases of both…
Camus:
- Friendship can become love. Love in friendship… Never. Dont walk behind me, i can not guide you. Do not walk ahead of me, I can not follow you. Just walk beside me and be my friend. Not being loved is a simple misfortune; the real misfortune is not loving. Nothing is more despicable than respect based on fear. Freedom is nothing more than an opportunity to be better. If the world were clear, art would not exist. True generosity, in relation to the future, consists in giving everything to the present. Artists think according to words. Philosophers, according to the ideas. Integrity has no need for rules. You cannot gain experience by doing experiments. You cannot create the experience. You must experience it. An intellectual is a person whose mind looks at itself.Totalitarian tyranny is not built on the virtues of the totalitarians but on the faults of the democrats. It is better to be wrong without killing anyone and letting others speak, than to be right in the midst of silence and corpses. We will rarely trust someone who is better than us. Who could say that an eternity of bliss can compensate for an instant of human pain? If man fails to reconcile justice and freedom, he fails at everything. Man has two faces: he cannot love without loving himself. Innocent is the one who does not need to explain himself. Everything I know with greater certainty about the morals and obligations of men, I owe to football. Stupidity always insists.to be right amid the silence and the corpses. We will rarely trust someone who is better than us. Who could say that an eternity of bliss can compensate for an instant of human pain? If man fails to reconcile justice and freedom, he fails at everything. Man has two faces: he cannot love without loving himself. Innocent is the one who does not need to explain himself. Everything I know with greater certainty about the morals and obligations of men, I owe to football. Stupidity always insists.to be right amid the silence and the corpses. We will rarely trust someone who is better than us. Who could say that an eternity of bliss can compensate for an instant of human pain? If man fails to reconcile justice and freedom, he fails at everything. Man has two faces: he cannot love without loving himself. Innocent is the one who does not need to explain himself. Everything I know with greater certainty about the morals and obligations of men, I owe to football. Stupidity always insists.Innocent is one who does not need to explain himself. Everything I know with greater certainty about the morals and obligations of men, I owe to football. Stupidity always insists.Innocent is the one who does not need to explain himself. Everything I know with greater certainty about the morals and obligations of men, I owe to football. Stupidity always insists.
Fontanarrosa:
- Of me it will possibly be said that I am a comic writer, at most. And it will be true. I am not too interested in the definition that is made of me. I do not aspire to the Nobel Prize in Literature. I take myself for very well paid when someone approaches me and says: I shit laughing with your book. Friendship is like health: We never realize its true value until we lose it. You are not perfect, nor are you great, but as a friend, you are phenomenal. Friendship doubles our happiness and divides our sadness. It is very difficult to find a good friend, even more difficult to leave him and impossible to forget. An honest answer is a sign of true friendship. Cultivating a true friend requires dedication and time. Friendship is the most important ingredient in life's recipe. He associated soccer with friendship.I always meet with a group of friends to play games, go to the field or watch games on television. I saw a star fall. I made a wish. And the star fell on your house. The bird is free. It would be even more so if he was single. The blind man, washing his face, recognizes himself.
The relationships that interest us are those that denote a significant “back and forth” between its parts, those that affect both the subject and its environment, those that have to do with subjective and social change.
Let us agree as follows: We are going to call "links" to the most specific or influential relationships in human formation and "ties" to the most general relationships or those conducive to the consolidation of humanity. Subjectivity will be the resulting or "swing" of both realities.
A bond has a strong affective charge, an energy that gives it important characteristics. Therefore, saying “affective ties” would be redundant. On the other hand, the bond refers to the forces that unite the social, saying “social ties” would be equivalent to considering groups and communities (not to be confused with grouping and collectivity, simple relationships that are not of interest here).
That is why the bonds are appreciated through the love they connote. If we help ourselves by resorting, more or less, to the classification made by the ancient Greeks (eros: sexual or passionate - storgé: familiar or mature - philia: fraternal or respectful - agape: altruistic or spiritual) we could say that, according to the combinations of different loves or depending on how the bond is manifested, appear: couple relationships (where the body, in all its meanings, is the main issue), filial or kinship relationships (where affection is lived or the body is put as support and protection) and friendship (where accompaniment prevails almost unconditionally, bodily issues take a back seat). So, basically, we find three types or bonding environments: “couple” (between spouses or not),"Family" (consanguineous or not) and "friends" (between peers or not). They are just category names that allow the use of language, mainly when it comes to explaining what happens at a relational level. Let's think: two people living together can be a couple and / or family, such configuration does not determine the nature of the bond. Furthermore, if we extend the sense of coexistence, it could only be a friendship. Although there are common features, there are three types of link that, beyond definitions or delimitations, we can assume as existing and basic.such configuration does not determine the character of the link. Furthermore, if we extend the sense of coexistence, it could only be a friendship. Although there are common features, there are three types of link that, beyond definitions or delimitations, we can assume as existing and basic.such configuration does not determine the character of the link. Furthermore, if we extend the sense of coexistence, it could only be a friendship. Although there are common features, there are three types of link that, beyond definitions or delimitations, we can assume as existing and basic.
Social ties, on the contrary, are determined by the environment and do not depend on affect, at least not with the intensity of the ties. They are carried out in four areas or spatiotemporal categories that refer to the possible interactions or the quality of the exchanges: psycho-social or individual (the "minor" area), socio-dynamic or group, institutional and community (the "greater" area). ”). Here too the limits are diffuse because there are overlaps, due to the "nature" of the subject… This is another important point: Individuality and collectivity merge into the subject, it is not just "an individual" (a grain of sand or a drop in the ocean) or "society" (the desert of sand or "liquid modernity").
Links and other relationships take place in these areas, but generally all are understood as "object". What I mean is that the link can be defined as a relationship between a subject and an object, but here the "objective" is always another subject. "The link is a complex structure that includes a subject, an object and their mutual interrelation, with communication and learning processes" (Pichon Rivière).
Let's say that the subjects, including their objects, are distributed and confused among the plots of social networks that, in turn, make up the great human network. The "network", as a graphic or educational resource, is not something static. We resort to it to try to understand the complexity of the human phenomenon, we seek to get involved wanting to reach an ever greater understanding. We learn to weave nets as we go, we are not born weavers…
It is insufficient to philosophize, do politics or perfect economic and political models if all this does not also go through the simplicity of life itself, if life is that other thing that money cannot buy and power cannot achieve…
Since the review of Human Rights, some years ago, progress has been made on issues such as childhood, mental health and gender. Much remains to be resolved, as laws or regulations do not directly imply the prevention of illness or prosperity. Something good has happened: the "legal person" has been recognized and granted to many subjects who remained excluded from "normality", even animals (considered non-human subjects)… It is remarkable that there is so much "care" and other times no…
There has been much debate about minorities (a majority scattered around the world), but the most interesting or pressing issues are just emerging (wars and the arms industry, genocide and asylum for refugees, poverty and drug trafficking, etc.). What more everyday than this… In the fields of praxis there is negligence… there is also a "biocentrism" that challenges us against the limits of possible actions, because there is a "vital love" that gives meaning to relationships. Only in this way can one fully understand what it means to choose, because freedom is not in decisions, but in the field where they are made. Each election determines a field of possibilities, it is decided on what has been chosen or, failing that, on what was imposed and it is believed that it is the only possible thing.
Mental health or healthy practices
Policies on mental health are in the crosshairs, from the new law and demanicomialization, but the medicalization of life has a strong impact on health in general. At least, now, it is possible to observe stereotypes, interests and mistakes. Inside and outside the sector, both in workers and professionals, as in the families of patients and society in general, the issue takes on other dimensions.
There are cases of practices, neither traditional nor hegemonic, that have been effective. These are interventions that, operating outside the classical medical paradigm, demonstrate the viability and therapeutic value of social work, expression and accompaniment. But this is itself, broadly speaking, what is now forbidden for the rest. Let's say that the "healthy" population is not as well as it seems if it suffers from stress, panic attacks, eating disorders, insomnia, syndromes, addictions and other pathologies or chronic diseases (despite the advances of medicine and the large pharmaceutical industry)…
It is true that diseases have a somatic background, but there is also a psychosocial background. As Alicia Stolkiner 30 might say: "You cannot reduce depression to interactions between some molecules." In this regard, I transcribe the following paragraph from a work by Emiliano Galende 31What and how is research in Mental Health today ?: “Much of the current research, which is what psychiatrists read, arises from the multiplication of brain images in which new psychic pathologies are investigated aimed at the production of new useful drug molecules to intervene, modify or guide human behavior. It is a matter of affirming that there is an equivalence between mental functions and brain processes, especially in the communication between neurons (the synapse), which would make the emotions, sensitivity, thinking, suffering and behaviors of individuals accessible to scientific knowledge. There is no doubt that these neurobiological investigations and their methodologies are scientific,but transferred to the medical field for the interpretation of mental suffering, they are false: they cannot account for the uniqueness of each subject, the human capacity for creation, the diversity of ways of interpreting reality and the social environment in which they inhabit, the plasticity of behavior in relation to the natural and social environment. It is abusive and unscientific to reduce thought to a purely brain function, to chemical interactions in the synapse (neurotransmitters), ignoring the capacity of each subject for invention and the creation of new ways of interacting with the world, and among other things of invent the specific language for human social life. "of the diversity of ways of interpreting reality and the social environment in which they inhabit, the plasticity of behavior in relation to the natural and social environment. It is abusive and unscientific to reduce thought to a purely brain function, to chemical interactions in the synapse (neurotransmitters), ignoring the capacity of each subject for invention and the creation of new ways of interacting with the world, and among other things of invent the specific language for human social life. "of the diversity of ways of interpreting reality and the social environment in which they inhabit, the plasticity of behavior in relation to the natural and social environment. It is abusive and unscientific to reduce thought to a purely brain function, to chemical interactions in the synapse (neurotransmitters), ignoring the capacity of each subject for invention and the creation of new ways of interacting with the world, and among other things of invent the specific language for human social life. "to chemical interactions in the synapse (neurotransmitters) ignoring the capacity of each subject for the invention and the creation of new ways of interacting with the world, and among other things to invent the specific language for human social life. "to chemical interactions in the synapse (neurotransmitters) ignoring the capacity of each subject for the invention and the creation of new ways of interacting with the world, and among other things to invent the specific language for human social life. "32
Everything is in motion but it does not mean that things change, some could remain the same or coexist with the best intentions. There are not sufficient guarantees, as long as there is no openness or broad criteria. In the future, any of us, faced with a disorder such as senile dementia, could be declared "insane" and lose some of their rights. It will depend on the "mentality" of the medical board and, from the beginning, of the family member or the responsible professional (there must be a subject capable of welcoming, hosting or accommodating the other). That is why it is extremely necessary to intercede on these matters, no matter where we are or will be, if I can or will…
I want to highlight, with respect to this topic, what concerns the “therapeutic accompaniment”, it seems to me that there are some interesting questions. It is a "device" that is implemented in situations of socio-subjective conflict. Their services can be developed within the home, in educational or work environments, in recreational and leisure activities or in the transit of an internment.
As Kuras de Mauer and Resnizky 33 say, “a space between desolation and hope, between disconnection and belonging”. It is noteworthy that the therapeutic companion always works together with an interdisciplinary team, exercising an active role in the development of different intervention strategies.
Here, obviously, the subject is no longer an "object" of guardianship or surveillance or confinement. It is a subject of rights. The aim was to “humanize practices”, that is, psychiatric deinstitutionalization and social reintegration. Accompanying the patient is also discussing their situation with the different groups to which they belong or are subject, so that their members can recognize their own discriminatory and marginalizing actions.
Magali Besson 34 in her writing "Challenges for the implementation of the new National Mental Health Law", recommends avoiding the neoliberal version of demanicomialization, since it would not promote other substitute modes of asylums. Losing the notion of "dismantled state" to regain confidence in a state interlocutor from whom what the law promotes as rights can be demanded. In this way, the plans of politics, the clinic and planning can be re-articulated. You have to lose your omnipotence and regain joy in practices where the unexpected and difference appear.
Deleuze 35 says that a device is like a ball. The weft must be woven and the passenger's particular opening positioning is the starting point. But it must also be taken into account that a device has processes that are always out of balance, with framing oscillations and sudden emotional swings of the patients. These movements, in the exercise, give rise to permanent tactical and strategic variations.
From the bonding point of view, the therapeutic companion's work frame is asymmetric. He is not a friend although he can establish emotional ties. He is part of a psychotherapeutic team, performs a care task and is paid for his work. It is a reference for the patient, it brings them closer to different ways of acting in the face of the vicissitudes of life. This is what can be therapeutic: proposing breaks in stereotypical forms of attachment, while helping to learn to wait and procrastinate. Providing containment, he approaches the other as a discriminated other, setting clear but not rigid limits.
The appropriate profile is related to a certain position that may be the effect of having undergone a certain subjective job in life, for example having gone through a crisis or simply having a unique story that enables the task. It has to do with holding three attitudes: a "proper ethics" of one's own person, a politics regarding the place of "madness" and a "transcendent posture" regarding death.
Returning to the issue of public health and human development, this same accompaniment is more than optimal. It could serve as a model to provide social ties and ties with attributes and procedures for the intervention of symbolic violence. The bond of friendship is similar. Precisely, in the 70s, as a precedent for this device, the psychiatrist Eduardo Kalina 36 carried out a study with adolescents addicted to drugs. It consisted in the formation of a role that he called "qualified friend."
Let us bear in mind that these structures present an added value or added value, they have a healthy effect, they refer to a certain therapeutic value. Friendship, far from being something accessory or superfluous, apart from formalities, is the best remedy against pain or psychic suffering. It may be a no-brainer, but the solution to violence is so simple that it is not seen or believed…
A return to the field of bonding, of the affective and representative of the human, today is recognized from different disciplines and demanded by many social actors. The question is how to train "friends" to be good "companions" or, rather, how to make people know how to accompany themselves.
It is not easy, because it is not an exclusively objective task, but also subjective. From this perspective, groups are not operational if there is no institution or community to provide support or containment. These groups are not formed by the mere fact of "accommodating people in a room", nor can they be reduced to "a team that has to solve slogans." If there are teams, effective or more or less functional, it is because there is a group that is well constituted or focused on tasks motivated by a vital project. In the same way, you cannot ask or demand that two people bond or love each other without violence, because that will depend on a job they will have to face and the help they can get.
For this reason, as in the case of therapeutic accompaniment, there is an implicit psychosocial framework. It is not that people realize it, but that, when it works, it regulates interactions or allows it to operate in a way that seems natural. In this case, we are going to think of it as a set of prescriptions that favor an accompaniment. Instead of "naturalizing power", a "praxis of trust" is naturalized. The renunciation of applying what is known in the form of rules or maxims that shape reality, refers to a “letting go” by the other, it is a “abandoning oneself in accompanying 37 ” or a fluency that can only be experienced from constructs 38symbolic like "the rhythm of friendship" or "vital energy". Objectivity is not lost, it is impregnated with a subjectivity that complements it. It is a "rhythm" or "energy" that brings other possible choices, more humane or, at best, less violent. Diversity is what enriches us, it is better to get rid of prejudices from "above" and fears from "inside"…
Accompaniment
Decades ago, when there was no culture like the current one, strongly marked by money and the production of goods and services, there was a social framework that, in the form of strict ethics and morals, regulated relationships. In its place or replacement still, despite so much road traveled, there is nothing…
No one is to blame, nor can we blame only capitalism 39 or corporations 40 for what happens. The prevailing social model was also and is chosen… of course, from a very poor field of possibilities or choices…
At some point in our lives, this is what is sensed and cannot be said… There is suffering made silence, some attitudes that hide superfluous interests and fallacious phrases, a blind trust or tied to an object, a meek surrender to the " power relationships".
We are all "refugees" from the same "war" that we declared, generations ago, on humanity. Although it sounds exaggerated, that is "symbolic violence" (this phrase is another possible definition of it). The other types of violence, those that are believed, in reverse, which are the most frequent, can be addressed without major resistance because, sooner or later, they are observable.
But let's think again about the groups, there is a “land to be cultivated”, demarcated and supported by a frame or container frame, as if it were a platform for take-off, so that each member can go towards their best possibilities. Otherwise, one could not speak of a device (of operating on becoming) or of intervention (of involving those involved).
Let's say that, for anyone, for the subject of this modernity, friendship would have to privilege the accompaniment (in a similar way as in the profession described), as to enjoy its therapeutic effect. That is, an openness towards otherness, as the capacity to face violence, in social ties and ties, where there are subjects who are companions and are accompanied. The difference, between the therapeutic bond and these other everyday ones, would be in the symmetry or, in any case, in an occasional asymmetry that alternates subjective positions according to the bonding situation.
In short… What is it about? What is all this? It is to influence such symbolic constructions (because that is what these relationships are), solving obstacles and resistances, understanding this process while trying to achieve a goal, when carrying out a task or when you want to obtain some benefit. Operating on the thoughts, feelings and ways of acting that are emerging, in an "artisanal" way while talking and trying things to do or share (ideas and strategies).
Conclusions
The current dilemmas demand practical changes and this, saving distances and avoiding confusion, is something complementary with the implementation of policies or laws. It is not only about economies and technologies, it refers to the right to intervene, fully and satisfactorily, on the symbolic universe in which we move. That is, the right to receive an education and socialization that provides the opportunity to operate on the situations experienced. At the very least, knowing and being able to decide within a larger set of possibilities or choices.
Life does not have to conform to some assumptions or follow any opinion, it does not have to submit to anything or flow conditioned by any structure. But such "friendship" with life is "violated", apparently, it is shattered by "the irruption of the other." By prevailing a look that remains with the violence engendered in such an encounter, it becomes evident that no one could, can or will with such liberation. Then, limits are imposed, an order is legitimized. But history shows us that the more this reality takes place, the more violence is generated.
Crime or insanity appear as evils or diseases that must be eradicated, their carriers are persecuted, isolated and deprived of some or all of their rights. When the "moment of disagreement" has arrived, how can we not "wrinkle" 41… However, other views are possible. It cannot be that "the system" determines how to live and die, when in reality it is about the arrival in and the transit through a humanity that deserves to be lived (and "died"), with love and dignity, where it is possible to transcend suffering, beyond comfort and material goods.
Within a humanizing culture, it would be the exercise of criticism and creation, through a subject who, apart from being "subject" to specific conditions of existence, is capable of changing such conditions and jointly building their social reality.
Although it sounds utopian, psychosocial work like the one described is possible. What's more, it is the only way to stop the violence. I can say that, from Social Psychology (my orientation is "Pichonian"), I have witnessed such potentialities and changes (unfortunately, since the "drift" 42). Two reasons are sufficient to support such an idea: First, it is useless to intervene on these facts directly. Second, operating from outside of everyday life is "patching up" the situation.
Pichon affirmed that the “social macro-structure” transcends us, also that we are determined by our “concrete conditions of existence”. But, he conceived the subject as a producer of such conditions (in addition to being produced by his social plots). That is, the very reality in which we participate surpasses us (in many aspects it is difficult or almost an illusion to talk about changes or improvements) and, even so, however, we know that operability and creativity have to do with manipulate the “existing” (the “being- there” 43Heidegger). It is enough to alter the things around us, configuring them according to the needs, so that there is a concomitant effect in that difficult reality. Although something obvious must be highlighted: the larger the area of development, the more people or groups are required. It is not a general rule, but something logical when one jumps from his small environment to the globalized world.
I want to make a reservation, before continuing. I'm going to take the liberty of using "lunatic words" or "informal terms", I think it's better because it illustrates this violence without so many reservations and allows me to take away the excessive "sweetness" with which friendship is generally "savored" (taste and know have the same etymological root).
Just as it cannot be denied that there are hegemonic models, neither can it be denied the great lack that, at a mental and physical level, is affecting both young people and adults, the poor and the rich, large cities and its periphery, both to underdeveloped and developed countries, regardless of gender or any other difference that you want to highlight. Beyond any model, we do not know how to choose or we believe that we should delegate such a right. Perhaps, driven by needs, we are compelled to assume a modernity that we have not chosen, accepting the existence of mistreatment, abuse and segregation. Of course, all this can change, although the worst of the obvious is that the resistance comes from all of us. Despite good intentions or obfuscation 44and pain, change remains "outside" or "inside" and never "in hand" 45.
Each one contributes, along with what is “good” or what they believe to be good, something “bad” (or “neutral”) for health and general freedom, something that seems inevitable, such as a “suicidal behavior” or a "Logic of conformity" articulated with subjection to the status of power. But this is not "natural", it is built. In the same way that this reality or these violent realities were built… one or others more humane or dignified can be built. Of course, by changing those specific conditions that maintain inertia… the subject changes. Elections change or better decisions are made, subjectivity changes.
There are no norms that can replace coexistence (remember that groups and communities are not “rejoint” 46 or “stanchions” 47 of people). But it can be reduced to a very limited space and time: thus it takes the form of "a refuge" and, as a consequence, daily life is "reduced" to a few experiences. If the coexistence disappears, "worse"… more rules and more violence (an agony), save who can (a deception). There is no worse misfortune than being "imprisoned in a dungeon without walls" and I do not mean agoraphobia 48…
After all… Who can survive violence? Due to the terror of losing one's life, the fear of suffering or the fear of being a victim, a harsh and cruel reality is taking shape. If it is tolerated, it is because it was learned to "taxi" 49, to operate in such a way to "safar" 50, dodging and concealing the "blows" 51 in a life where social ties and ties are "broken", "loose "," Dismantled "or too" tight "and" wired ". On the contrary, if risk is assumed as something inherent in life (we can speak of taking risks for and for life) we will discover other alternatives.
Let's recap, these relationships have to do with structures from which capital gains emerge. They are spaces and times that open up for coexistence, granting opportunities and sufficient strengths to do more than survive…
I am referring to violence as the result of a passive or anomalous adaptation to the environmental conditions and to friendship as an active or beneficial adaptation… but let's keep the following in mind: the interaction is between subjects. The trap is to consider relationships as mediated by the objects of these subjects, when in reality they are only things (material or immaterial) that function as a pretext or serve for the “trance” 52. A bond or tie cannot be reduced or simplified to mere exchanges, accommodations, modifications or manipulations. Generally, these things are seen as causes or there are factors that influence, and it is true, but it is not a matter of environment and nothing more. Subjectivity itself is at stake and that is what determines change, that is what I mean when I say "changes in the concrete conditions of existence." It is the subjects, directly involved, who carry out such movements. Their relationships strengthen or decline, the corresponding area (individual, group, institutional or community) is consolidated and integrated or fragmented and disintegrated.
Who is “gambling” (exposing himself and risking for life)? The one who, at some point, does not "let it pass" (does not hide or evade). The one who acts as a “spokesperson”, a “leader”, a “saboteur” or a “scapegoat” as appropriate or required by the group. But, things are operated on by accommodating them or circumstances are manipulated as is known and can be done… from the thoughts and feelings that one has, trying to endure amounts of affection that are silenced as inexpressible, that are silenced or act in some way, and also by unloading emotions that are shouted or put into action in other ways. In this attempt, the subject changes and affirms or fights not to change and refuses. Who else who less, all the members of that environment are at stake and, if they can, they play it. What happens is that the interactions vary,there are personal differences and different positions or roles.
There are attitudes or functions and behaviors, adjudicated and assumed, that are lived without inconvenience or from a certain stereotype and precariousness. They are ways of operating that combine or interfere, maintain cohesion or cause ruptures. That the coexistence is "functional" or "dysfunctional" does not determine the viability of the intervention or the existence of psychosocial work. It will depend on the desire to face the problem, the degree of violence, institutional support and other issues that have to do with available "energy subsidies", since they are situations that demand effort and perseverance.
Therefore, an individual or an isolated group would be unable to access a truly human quality of life, it could not embody a social change in that direction. There must be "link" and "group" or human relationships…
These last paragraphs sound too theoretical or far-fetched. Let's go to the praxis, imagine situations: For example, during abstinence from a narcotic the procedure is to replace it with another (methadone 53), decreasing the doses until the patient overcomes the syndrome. The therapy also includes psychological and social strategies, aimed at recovering the affected bonds and ties. The worst thing would be to take the drug off him and force him to change. This is not the best of examples, but it will do if we avoid absurd parallels. Then, in a situation of abuse, there will be an environment or context of violence that will have to do with certain productions of meaning that involve the subjects in this way. Victim and perpetrator are, in many cases, complementary roles. It is not something that is easily accepted but, in any case, what is difficult to see clearly is how coercion or domination is exercised. Someone who is abused and cannot get out of the situation or someone who abuses and cannot change, because there is an other (subject,institution or culture) that does not allow it or for whatever reason, engages in behaviors that involve passive adaptation. Giving him advice on how to proceed would be tremendously useless or instilling other behavior in him would be dangerous. It is convenient, depending on the case and the occasion, to accompany and gradually work on communication and the transfer of learning that can influence a favorable subjective change. There are no guarantees, but what is known is that such violence cannot be "fought" or "covered" with "silly kindness." If the subject has something to survive or what she does reports something to her, who knows what might happen if she loses that something or if what we think will be useful to her is worse.Giving him advice on how to proceed would be tremendously useless or instilling other behavior in him would be dangerous. It is convenient, depending on the case and the occasion, to accompany and gradually work on communication and the transfer of learning that can influence a favorable subjective change. There are no guarantees, but what is known is that such violence cannot be "fought" or "covered" with "silly kindness." If the subject has something to survive or what he does reports something to him, who knows what might happen if he loses that something or if what we think will be useful to him is worse.Giving him advice on how to proceed would be tremendously useless or instilling other behavior in him would be dangerous. It is convenient, depending on the case and the occasion, to accompany and gradually work on communication and the transfer of learning that can influence a favorable subjective change. There are no guarantees, but what is known is that such violence cannot be "fought" or "covered" with "silly kindness." If the subject has something to survive or what he does reports something to him, who knows what might happen if he loses that something or if what we think will be useful to him is worse.working on communication and the transfer of learning that can influence a favorable subjective change. There are no guarantees, but what is known is that such violence cannot be "fought" or "covered" with "silly kindness." If the subject has something to survive or what she does reports something to her, who knows what might happen if she loses that something or if what we think will be useful to her is worse.working on communication and the transfer of learning that can influence a favorable subjective change. There are no guarantees, but what is known is that such violence cannot be "fought" or "covered" with "silly kindness." If the subject has something to survive or what she does reports something to her, who knows what might happen if she loses that something or if what we think will be useful to her is worse.
Fears, in the absence of containment and understanding, prevail. The other can be intolerable if I stick with those gestures or those words that he brings and that make me react or the situations can become catastrophic if they refer to "loves that harass" or "care that invalidates", also if there are "customs to defend" or "ideas that condemn." Each situation has its own, the ideal would be that there is a subjectivity, more or less shared, through which we are able to work it.
Let us understand that, in the current context, the globalization of capitalism was not a valid precedent for a social change in humanity nor did it introduce something favorable in this sense, in the same way that welfarism (“welfarism” or “welfare state” was not) ”). On the contrary, social networks, as they are displayed to us today, have more to do with things than with people. Networks that trap and limit, contrary to how they are connoted, instead of expanding elections, distributing possibilities, or promoting subjective decentrations. There is an appetite on the part of the contemporary subject, to interact with objects as if they were carriers of eroticism 54 it needs to receive from others. Many hold the idea of a fetishism 55crossing all planes of life. It is not uncommon for relationships to have been distorted, the serious thing is that this happened to the detriment of the intra and interpsychic (within the "bocho" and between the "bochos"). It is logical, when the prevailing sense is that of an economy that fosters the urgent urge to consume, as a synonym of a lifestyle that must sustain the success of the company and the market. It is also logical that, as a counterpart or correlate of this, there is an economy of crime and the criminalization of life.
In this regard Lipovetsky 56, in "The kingdom of hyperculture: cosmopolitanism and western civilization", writes: "We are no longer in the noble order of culture that is defined as life of the spirit, but in" cultural capitalism "in which Culture and communication industries are imposed as instruments of growth and engines of the economy. (…) It signifies, on a more anthropological level, a new existential relationship with the distant (…) the daily experience of a globalized world is affirmed, whether through ecological threats, the 'airborne' spread of viral epidemics, imperatives universal market, economic crises, migrations and diasporas, terrorist acts, major world events (…) "
Thus, undoubtedly, there is no other than "Cambalache 57 for ever"… Someone has to pay for "the broken dishes" 58, someone must "expiate 59 the guilt". This is how, from time to time, an age group 60 or with certain attributes appears that functions as a “scapegoat” 61. Meanwhile, the rest of society is trapped in a "madhouse logic." Some, comfortable or reassured, wandering in search of new placebos, attentive to the offers of more goods and better services and others, cornered or crouched, trying to make their own with what is left or they have been prepared from the State policies and the NGOs.
It is not necessary to carry out a situational analysis or a psychosocial diagnosis to corroborate that subjectivity is like “a sponge”. What happens, be it facts or news, due to their combinations and occasional associations, impacts on it. Let us remember that, as they are also symbolic representations, interpretations and attitudes are impregnated with unconscious fantasies and productions. What I want to highlight is that, despite all the impediments that we can argue or so much “veiled thing”, there are ways to go towards the dilemmas…
Predicting a "social change" through a "subjective change", that is to say, talking about a new objectivity and subjectivity, it may be a cause for fright or ridicule… Perhaps, there will be those who say: "it is possible" or " I like the idea ”and others who will express:“ it is impossible ”or“ the idea is ridiculous ”. I calculate that, by going outside the usual frameworks or by not responding exactly with the established scientific and cultural criteria, this will not go from being one more writing or one less feeling… or maybe not and it serves for something… at least to exercise a praxis…
Proposals
Honestly, the previous paragraph, like the subject of this work, leaves me with "butterflies in my stomach" and that means two things to me: love and fear. I can talk about love, I have no problem adding it to theories and hypotheses. I don't mix my private life with my professional life, but I do investigate and get into everyday life. No, I'm not ashamed, I consider myself "accompanied" and "companion". That is why I can also speak of fear (otherwise I would be just a romantic), for dignity and for profession.
Perhaps, I should have written more about links and groups or devices and interventions from this Pichonian perspective. I don't know… I don't want to make a kind of "medical prescription" out of it, less a dogma… but hey… then this attempted proposal…
The link is "triangular", in addition to two subjects there is what is known as a "structuring third party". This "other" present in the relationship (bicorporal and tripartite), represents reasons and resources available to the subjects. It will be the task they face or any articulation between them. Hinge, as a support and swing, for communication and learning.
As long as there is such a dynamic, there will be a sense by which this relationship can be connoted as "special" or different from other "common" ones. As we have seen, this is different from affection. Only love (in any of its forms) can explain the existence of this type of social relationship, always in force, despite so much violence. Of course, if it does not prevail against other affectations, due to problems with the third party, the relationship is negatively altered.
What is seen in terms of "friendship" and "accompaniment" has to do with this, with maintaining and rebuilding ties. So, "the objectified" or "fetishes" are the opposite. The problems begin when the subjects get "bogged down" in the questions of the third party who, after all, also represents culture.
What is seen in terms of "group" and "community" are in parallel with the above. Each subject brings, from their links, an infinity of things and affectations that may or may not be useful, that may or may not generate violence. Each one will get something out of the process and the group experience… a satisfaction and learning directly proportional to what they put in (what they were encouraged to put out of everything they brought). The “Operative Group” technique is designed for that, it is a device that is adapted to allow the resolution of the needs (material and affective) of its members. Working on anxieties, while working on regular or scheduled tasks, is the way to review stereotypical behaviors, disagreements, contradictions, and disappointments. In other words, violence against oneself and others,obstacles that prevent the realization of what the group or the community has projected or agreed as its goal. In short, obstacles that precede the fluidity of life, due to their relationship with the life projects of the subjects (what is projected in the daily life from dreams, desires, desires or concerns).
A classic definition of Operational Group, given by Pichon, is the following: “A group of people who, linked by constants of time and space and articulated by their mutual internal representation, explicitly or implicitly propose to carry out a task that constitutes its purpose, interacting through complex mechanisms of adjudication and assumption of roles "
Gladys Adamson 62 explains: “(…) it is a device characterized by being a collective understood as a unit of the multiple, with a complex structure since it includes the positions or roles of Member, Coordinator and Observer but that, as roles, respond to a third party structuring that is the Task ”. And she reflects: “The Operational Group technique places us in the problem of ▼ what to do», of ionship knowing how to do »in Pichonian Social Psychology. In the formation of Social Psychology there is a dimension of the transmissible: the conceptual production that is informed through the classes and the bibliography. But there is another dimension: the non-transferable dimension that emerges without any explanation through the same experience as a member of the Operating Group. "
The “orthodox” device of the Task Force includes 4 moments:
- Class or information Group meeting (the teacher or person in charge of moment 1 does not participate) Coordination team meeting (observer / s and coordinator / s) Report
The above is a part of everything that involves Pichon Rivière's ECRO (Operative Referential Conceptual Scheme). Without which there would be no praxis, but it is not praxis…
If praxis is a mixture of action and reflection, a "systematization" of experiences or an organized set of experiences, well… something that is not an ECRO… then, in this case, it will be the "field" 63 to operate. It will have to do with being able to listen to the other, with pacing and attending to what resonates, with speaking only when you think you have something useful to contribute, with providing support and containment, with sharing and fostering collaboration. In short, praxis is co-operation: operating together or jointly.
The friendship-violence complex, with its ambivalences, challenges us. The more we get involved, the better we understand it, and vice versa. It is not what "I say" or what "Pichon said", it is praxis…
- Graduated in Psychology and Dra. In Social Psychology. She has written several books, book chapters, and articles in scientific journals. Director of the School of Social Psychology of the South. Power to apply knowledge and improvise. Articulate knowledge or ability with the character and spirit that the situation requires.
