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
