Violence and family life: psychoanalytic and gender approaches

Abstract

We aim to examine the possibilities for an interdisciplinary dialogue between Psychoanalysis and gender theory, as expressed in studies about violence on Collective Health, to approach occurrences of aggression and abuse in family life and their possible impacts on health, with particular attention to the psychological impacts on children and women, as well as in the family group as a whole. Based on classical authors for both disciplinary contributions, we examine a concrete case taken from a family care situation. This examination consists of three interpretative dimensions: first, considerations on the individual case in its family context; second, the case seen from the perspective of cultural issues; and third, the relation between culture and its individualized expression in the case. We show the possibility of conducting an approach that integrates the intrapsychic dimension, which concerns the functioning of the inner world of the individuals involved, with the sociocultural and historical realities that constitute their context of life. With the aim of a comprehensive care of the cases, we highlight the practical importance of combining reflection and action of psychodynamic nature, a result of the examination of the intrapsychic impacts of violence from concepts such as trauma and terror, with recognition of cultural expressions in the individual and family realms, which strengthen normative acceptances of aggressions, victimizations, silencing, and trivialization of violence. The interdisciplinary dialogue makes possible to understand the development of culturally reinforced feelings and behaviors, such as fear and shame in the victims and repetition of violence in the aggressors.