Self-destructiveness as a profane knowledge - prohibitions and prejudices - an established taboo

Abstract

The ideas developed throughout this writing aim to work on the creation of taboos, as alienating prohibitions, which lead to the production of prejudices. In this sense, we start from the taboos forged by the culture of the Victorian era, contemporary to the origins of psychoanalysis, which demands an intense renunciation of desire, the product of a pathological repression due to excess: sexuality being proscribed, producing a “discomfort” in culture, which will be predominant in the first two decades of the 20th century. Continuing and aiming to structure a complement to the taboos, raising the problem of desire and its conflicts with the cultural order, we head to the taboos established due to the impossibility of humanity existing with the unthought, with the force of its self-destructiveness - a new “discomfort” in culture - a profane knowledge. To support this argument, from a metapsychological perspective, we will address the dynamics of narcissism versus masochism and its implications in the founding bases of the subject and the society. On this path, which aims to reflect on this “discomfort”, narcotizing masochism – the work of melancholy – and protective masochism – the work of mourning – will be our guides. In light of this proposition, we will use climate denialism as an interlocutor, which explicitly demarcates the production of alienating prohibitions and prejudices. This is what comes from the unbearable pain of the white centered world, when confronted with what we can call a fourth narcissistic wound of humanity.