Desamparo, amor e culpa: um estudo psicanalítico sobre a gênese e operação do supereu

Abstract

Taking as a starting point the irremediable antagonism between culture and the drive proposed by Freudian thought and its indication that the limitation of aggressiveness is the first and most severe sacrifice that society has to ask the individual, we will focus on the most important mechanism of handling aggressiveness in the Freudian perspective: its introjection in the form of the superego. We will unravel the genesis and modus operandi of this instance, radically articulating it to primordial helplessness. The two main functions of the superego, surveillance and criticism, correspond to two instinctual objects, the look and the voice, episodic substances of object a, according to Lacan. As far as the look is concerned, at birth, the helpless infants are the target of the enigmatic and astonishing gaze of the Other. It is looked at before looking. We will address this persecutory dimension of the immediate and original gaze. Just as the voice is not confused with the sound, the look is not confused with the vision. We will deal with this fundamental sketch between the eye and the gaze. Taking the Panopticon architecture idealized by Bentham and worked on by Foucault, we will explore the effects of the dissociation of the seeing-being pair, which makes the gaze tend towards the incorporeal and introjection. The gaze, however, is not limited to a vigilant-persecutive aspect. The Other's gaze is fundamental in the constitution of the self. The child turns to the one who holds him in front of the mirror, invoking his assent, demands the ratification of the value of that image in front of him. We will study the consequences of the dethronement of His Majesty the Baby and the erection of the ego ideal in an attempt to regain and secure narcissistic satisfactions. We will address pride and guilt in their relationship to the ideal of the self and the superego. We will treat the superego as a pure culture of the death drive, its deadliest face. We will discuss the consequences of limiting aggressiveness that is essential to the fabric of any social bond and its destinies. We will compare institutional definitions of hierarchy and discipline, pillars of militarism, with Foucault's analysis and we will question the possibilities and limitations of psychoanalysis in the Brazilian Navy.