Barcelona, July 24-26, 2008

Presentation

In spite of the progress of civilisation and the state laws by which we live, violence still affects couples and families painfully. Furthermore these are the most affected section of the population.

The facets of this violence are many and becoming now more well known, at least for their physical form. The psychic expressions - incest-like disorders, narcissistic perversion, pathological secrets, effects of the mental illness of a patient on his/her family, etc.- remain still not very well known.

Violent acts happening during some critical times in the family life (around a birth, during adolescence, old age) deserve specific attention because the weight of current reality makes us easily forget that the family suffers also from reminiscences.

This violence creates in the family environment, as well as in the psyche of the therapists, a powerful denial which can leave everyone dumbfounded.

We can even consider this denial as the main barrier to a deeper recognition of the disorganising effects of violence on intra and interpsychic links.

What is more, shared denial helps transgenerational transmission and deferred repetition of traumatic experiences of family history.

How can we understand and deal with this reality, taking into account the unconscious processes at work in the family group?

How could we transform psychic remnants of violence – from family, society, culture- current or inherited, during sessions ?

Which value do we grant the process of authority within the family and society as well as the psychic regularisations or dysfunction it causes?

How can we put into a story (structure and narrative) the expressions that the superego and the ego ideal of the subject take, as deferred actions, and this sometimes from birth, on a family group where violence rules?

Which fantasies, myths, shared ideals, which recurrent hallucinations underlie violent acts? What happens to intimate and shared feelings in such clinical cases?

We propose to address these questions and many others by discussing clinical material as well as theoretical and practical issues, using our experience in couple and family psychoanalysis.