Casual Violence: Mis-understanding, Misogyny, Adolescence

Broadcast 19 April, 2023. Duration: 55 minutes

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This paper was born out of a very specific emotional experience I had with a patient that alerted me to a phenomenon of casual violence which, owing to its everydayness, may remain incipient. The experience described with Mr X is specific, but he is also a placeholder for patients who seemed to come together in my mind. The nature of this seemed both elusive and pervasive in many patients. What they seemed to have in common was a certain violence by which they were expelled from spaces – official and/or intimate. Post #MeToo, some of them were accused of being predatory. For a long time, I could not identify it in the transference.

The paper traces this violence to a quotidian misogyny and furthermore to the introjection of a ‘mis-understanding link’. There appears to be a correspondence between ‘banal’ absence of thinking (Arendt, 2000) and a relationship of ‘mis-understanding’ (Bion, 1962). Such mis-understanding finds expression in forms of violent masculinity (Rose, 2021). Finally, it is suggested that contemporary masculinity is not of the older macho sort, but seems to have an affinity towards ‘adolescent states of mind’ (Meltzer, 1973). It is speculated that cultural practices seem to encourage a perpetual adolescence.

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Speaker:

Nilofer Kaul taught English Literature at a college in Delhi and now works as a Training and Supervising analyst. She won the Frances Tustin Prize for her paper on parasitism in 2018 and the Roszika Parker Prize for her paper on casual violence in 2021. Her book Plato’s Ghost on liminality and minus links in psychoanalysis was published by Phoenix Press in 2021.