Social Violence and State Violence today in Catalonia

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    Manifesto

     

    The undersigned are a group that works in the field of mental health and we have united about a common concern: to understand the institutionalization of violence in the current situation of our country, to denounce it and to discover some hypotheses able to enrich the frame of reference. Social violence and its mental representation are the starting point of our reflection.

    Confronted with the current events, do not hesitate to state:

    Not all violence is the same. Unmask state violence

    We do not like burnt containers. But we still enjoy less violence against people; State violence against a peaceful people; that four eyes are blown up in a week or that citizens are hit from behind. And all this, done by uniformed officers, Spanish and Catalan, on behalf of the state.

    The state has the legitimate use of force, not of violence. If the police stops, for example, a sexual psychopath and protects it from the overwhelming crowd, we understand that they use the right force. But if the state goes beyond the fair use of its force, then it becomes a violent state.

    In Catalonia, today, the state has far outstripped the use of the strength of which it holds. And it has turned it into violence with capital letters, that is, state violence. This violence of the state poses a high risk: when those who are responsible for protecting are precisely those who exhibit deadly power, the explosive contradiction of this paradox becomes the trigger for social violence.

    The human being, the bearer of destructive pulses, has created several intrapsychic pathways to organize and channel them. That those most obliged to facilitate the outside organization of this control (the police) are those that disagree most, has catastrophic social effects.

    There is no abstract, decontextualized violence, but all violence is concrete and has a field where it is deployed specifically. In no way can we not put on the same level the violent exercise of force, protected from an institutional status, and the expression of other forms of rowdyism or vandalism.

    Weapons of state violence

    Beyond mischief and imprisonment, state violence uses highly sophisticated weapons, which camouflage its severely destructive effects on the social bond: the aggressive use of the word, for obvious purposes on the persecuted groups; the perversion of language to create confusion and evade responsibility; and fear as a weapon of mass destruction.

    The perverse effects of fear produced from power

    In order to guarantee daily life and provide security, the human being creates and recreates society and culture. Fear, which is a driver of life against dangers, is necessary for our subsistence. But the fear that produces the ‘master’ of authoritarian power (the one who has the ‘monopoly of violence’, according to Interior Minister, Grande-Marlaska) is not a guarantee of life but of elimination of otherness, of the difference. Originating helplessness (the most radical fear of the human being), it contributes to the mental suffering and causes that the inhibition, the anxiety, the terror, the anguish, the plethora of psychosomatic disturbances, and also primary forms of self-defense, internal and external.

    Can we say that this fear is at the service of coexistence and democracy? Since September 20, 2017, the state does not protect or guarantee the security of a very important part of citizens; it is the source of a great moral suffering, and very often also physical.

    When the dialogue is denied, when the word resigns, the dominion of violence begins: have our politicians wondered where is the origin of the most burnt and scattered containers in our streets?

    As guarantors of the lives of their citizens and of the democratic order, as a result of the unease repeatedly expressed by a part of their population, the representatives of the state should be the first to establish processes of real dialogue.

    Without access to the word we can not be fully human or fully democratic.

    To understand the current situation, it must be placed in its complete historical context: our recent history and the global situation of the current world. It is not only violence that is seen now, so is the existence of shot in the gutters, the non-recognition of the ill-treated, the reprisals during the war, the postwar period and the dictatorship. And now, the evictions, the destruction of the pension guards, deny climate change, rescue banks, prohibit and mistreat cultures and minority languages. We accumulate a long, painful and shameful history.

    Conclusion

    We are, therefore, in a situation of transversal revolt, where great, young and little infant, anonymous, of all origins and conditions, a long time ago, we went out to the street facing fear, frustrations and injustice.

    We know very well that when state violence is exercised against a part of civil society, as it has been a long time ago, the only objective is the elimination of a category of citizens, because of their social class or because of their own culture.

    In a historical moment of great involution and manipulation of subjectivity, the unfolding of individuals in a movement of protest and cross-sectional disagreement is necessary, healthy, creative and subversive.

    Violent attacks on the right of protest consolidate a new despotism that, disguised as a democracy, attacks the mental and physical health of all individuals.

    In order to establish an order that repairs the destructions, it is necessary to unite efforts to distinguish between the different violences: the originals and the derivatives; those that emanate from destructive components of the death stroke and those that sustain the desire for life; and, finally, those that engender the symbolic effect of the law.

    It is necessary for mental health professionals to understand the suffering that comes to us within the history of the psychosocial context of the present events, and that we become witnesses of it.

    November 18, 2019

    Promoter Group

    ALTIMIRA, TERESA. Col·legi Oficial de Psicologia de Catalunya
    BAJET, JOAN ANDREU. Col·legi Oficial de Psicologia de Catalunya
    CLAMOSA, ESTER. Col·legi Oficial de Psicologia de Catalunya
    FORTUNY, LLUÍS. Col·legi Oficial de Psicologia de Catalunya
    JONCH, FINA. Col·legi Oficial de Psicologia de Catalunya
    LLEONART, MARTA. Col·legi Oficial de Psicologia de Catalunya
    MARTÍ, ORIOL. Col·legi de Metges de Barcelona
    MATA, NÚRIA. Col·legi Oficial de Psicologia de Catalunya
    MIÑARRO, ANNA. Col·legi Oficial de Psicologia de Catalunya
    MOIX. ROSER. Col·legi Oficial de Psicologia de Catalunya
    PIJUAN, JOAN. Col·legi Oficial de Psicologia de Catalunya
    RIGO, MERCÈ. Col·legi Oficial de Psicologia de Catalunya
    SALOMÓ. ESTEL. Col·legi Oficial de Psicologia de Catalunya
    SOLÉ, MARGARITA. Col·legi de Metges de Barcelona
    TARRAGÓ, REMEI. Col·legi de Metges de Barcelona
    TOLOSA, JUANJO. Col·legi Oficial de Psicologia de Catalunya

    Adhered

    MASSIP, JÚLIA. Col·legi Oficial de Psicologia de Catalunya
    GARRIGA, CONCEPCIÓ. Col·legi Oficial de Psicologia de Catalunya
    PONS, EVARIST. Col·legi Oficial de Psicologia de Catalunya
    ABADIA, LAURA. Col·legi Oficial de Psicologia de Catalunya
    PELEGRÍ, MATILDE. Col·legi Oficial de Psicologia de Catalunya
    HOMET, GUILLEM. Col·legi de Metges de Barcelona
    ARMENGOU, JOSEP MARIA. Col·legi de Metges de Barcelona
    WALTHER, MARC. Col·legi de Metges de Barcelona
    BAJET, JORDI. Col·legi Oficial de Psicologia de Catalunya
    FERRER, MONTSE. Col·legi de Metges de Barcelona
    JANER, MERCÈ. Col·legi Oficial de Psicologia de Catalunya
    CANAL, MONTSERRAT. Col·legi Oficial de Psicologia de Catalunya
    XANDRI, JORDI. Col·legi de Metges de Barcelona
    GUÀRDIA, MONTSERRAT. Col·legi Oficial de Psicologia de Catalunya
    JULIAN, CARME. Col·legi Oficial de Psicologia de Catalunya
    ABRIL, TERESA. Pedagoga jubilada
    COMAS, ALBERT. Psicòleg
    MUÑOZ, MARIA JOSÉ. Col·legi Oficial de Psicologia de Catalunya
    ARUMÍ, MONTSERRAT. Col·legi Oficial de Psicologia de Catalunya
    GALLART, MARIA. Col·legi Oficial de Psicologia de Catalunya
    GUILLEN, CARME. Col·legi Oficial de Psicologia de Catalunya
    VERA, NÚRIA. Col·legi Oficial de Psicologia de Catalunya
    DE NADAL, PAU. Col·legi Oficial de Psicologia de Catalunya
    FÀBREGAS, JULIAN. Col·legi Oficial de Psicologia de Catalunya
    MESEGUER, JOANA. Col·legi Oficial de Psicologia de Catalunya
    VENTURA, SÍLVIA. Col·legi Oficial de Psicologia de Catalunya
    FREIXES, JORDI. Col·legi Oficial de Psicologia de Catalunya
    FONT, ENRIC. Pedagog
    SORIANO, M. PILAR. Col·legi de Metges de Barcelona
    ARA, MARIA LUÍSA. Col·legi Oficial de Psicologia de Catalunya
    BARTOMEUS, ROSA. Col·legi Oficial de Psicologia de Catalunya
    CASTELLS, MONTSERRAT. Col·legi de Metges de Barcelona
    ROSALES, INÉS. Col·legi Oficial de Psicologia de Catalunya
    GAYÀ, MAGDALENA. Col·legi Oficial de Psicologia de Catalunya
    ETXEBARRIA, MARIA LUÍSA. Col·legi Oficial de Psicologia de Catalunya
    PEDREROL, MARIA AMELIA. Col·legi Oficial de Psicologia de Catalunya
    ROIG, ANNA MARIA. Col·legi Oficial de Psicologia de Catalunya
    BUENO, NOEMÍ. Col·legi Oficial de Psicologia de Catalunya
    MIRALPEIX, RAMON. Col·legi Oficial de Psicologia de Catalunya
    BIRBA, MERCÈ. Col·legi Oficial de Psicologia de Catalunya
    SOLER, JOSEP M. Col·legi Oficial de Psicologia de Catalunya
    BARBANY, PILAR. Col·legi Oficial de Psicologia de Catalunya
    TRENCHS, JOAQUIM. Col·legi Oficial de Psicologia de Catalunya
    PATUEL, JAUME. Col·legi Oficial de Psicologia de Catalunya
    FERNÁNDEZ, RICARD. Col·legi Oficial de Psicologia de Catalunya
    BARCELÓ, MERCEDES. Col·legi Oficial de Psicologia de Catalunya
    TALARN, ANTONI. Col·legi Oficial de Psicologia de Catalunya
    PARELLADA, MARIA ROSER. Col·legi Oficial de Psicologia de Catalunya
    LASO, ESTHER. Col·legi Oficial de Psicologia de Catalunya
    LUPINAC, SHERRY ELIZABETH. Col·legi Oficial de Psicologia de Catalunya
    JORDANA, MARGARITA. Col·legi Oficial de Psicologia de Catalunya
    OLIVÉ, ISABEL Col·legi Oficial de Psicologia de Catalunya
    LLAURADOR, JOSEP MARIA. Col·legi Oficial de Psicologia de Catalunya
    SALOMÓ, EVA. Col·legi Oficial de Psicologia de Catalunya
    TORRAS, BLANCA. Col·legi Oficial de Psicologia de Catalunya
    RIBES, SÍLVIA. Col·legi Oficial de Psicologia de Catalunya

    To adhere

    If you wish to adhere to this manifesto, send an email to declaracio2019salutmental@gmail.com

    Illustration made especially to accompany this manifesto
    Watercolor by psychologist Roser Moix (signing of the manifesto)

    Publications

    Vilaweb https://www.vilaweb.cat/noticies/psicolegs-i-psiquiatres-del-pais-difonen-un-manifest-contra-la-violencia-destat/