Freud's Why War? Revisited

Alternating a return to Freud's propositions in the well-known paper "Why War?" revisited with her own hypothesis of a feminine-maternal matricial third sitting at the origin of ethics conceived as responsibility towards the other, the author refers to Levinas's reflections on the phenomenon of war. She relates in particular to his introduction of Totality and Infinity, to passages from Difficult Freedom, as well as to one of his later works, which, in an interesting resonance with contemporary violence, is called: From the Sacred to the Holy. While contributing clinical illustrations or elements connected with the Israeli socio-political context in which she practices, the author focuses on the tension between the reality of wars and the aspiration for peace which she sees as related to a nostalgia to intimacy, that is to the feminine-maternal residing in every human.