Genocides and processes of subjectivation: Auschwitz as a paradigm of destructiveness towards the I-Other link

The genocides of the previous century made it possible for a group, presenting itself as bearer of legitimacy and common interests, to organize itself in order to eliminate another group of people, regardless of their individuality, merely because they belonged to another group. This is a violation of the basic I-Other bond, which enables identification, communication, psychic life itself. This violation is described in literature on the individual level, from the victims' viewpoints, and socially, from the viewpoints of the perpetrators and unconcerned spectators. The author analyses how the destruction of this basic bond may be tackled in the analysis room, conferring on the analyst the function of participating witness, and on a social level: the collective trauma produces the collapse of the unconscious narcissistic alliances that guarantee both the individual's and the group's psychic survival. Alongside the two great differences that provide grounds for violence - the differences between the sexes and between generations - Kaës asserts that there exists another great difference that is just as significant in causing violence, that which organizes the narcissistic position of the individual with respect to the group. The work of elaboration concerns the narcissistic contracts rooted in intersubjectivity, which allow for a shared life without annihilating healthy individual narcissism in its self-referential and group aspects.