The psychic constitution of civilized man and its relationship with the genesis of morality in Freud: a psychoanalytic analysis of the social structure

• Grant number: 16/02206-3
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Effective date (Start): May 01, 2016
• Effective date (End): April 30, 2017
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Philosophy
• Principal Investigator: Daniel Omar Perez
• Grantee: Lígia Foratto
• Host Institution: Instituto de Filosofia e Ciências Humanas (IFCH). Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Campinas , SP, Brazil

Abstract

This project proposes a philosophical work that takes psychoanalysis as an instrument of questioning the society which we live in. We will analyze the relationship between subject and society, looking to the genesis of morality from Freudian and Lacanian theory. The conception of subject that underlies is the subject of the unconscious, therefore made from complexes and disputes that provides a way to deal with their investments of libidinal energy into society. Such organization of instincts constitutes civilized individuals, able to follow laws and limits, so that the genesis of moral provides foundation to the possibility of civilization, and political and/or religious organizations. Psychoanalysis attributes the moral constitution of the subject to castration, when the abdication of pleasure is necessary, as well as the internalization of laws and limits that culture imposes upon us. The way individuals deal with such abdication and the limits imposed by authorities give way to the society which we live in and interfere in the political field, because the moral constitution in the individual sphere reveals itself culturally. We consider that all political action appears amid disputes of conflicting interests, so that the conflict is crucial both for social as psychic organization. We will consider, then, the psychoanalytic genesis of moral by castration, and we intend to discuss this subject-society relationship, fundamentally conflicted. (AU)