Winnicott, Kohut and the theory of intersubjectivity

a psychoanalysis of belonging facing the contemporary precariousness of the bonds

Abstract

The issues of many patients indicate the precariousness of the social context: the difficulty to find stable jobs and lasting relationships are sources of suffering, revealing the fragility or absence of a consistent sense of belonging. After resorting to certain contributions of sociology in order to understand such precariousness of the bonds, relating it to the dissolution of the social protections, I turn now to psychoanalytic authors who consider the subjective experience of belonging to an empathic environment as being essential to the process of subjectivation, recognizing the potentially traumatic aspects of the new social reality.