Urban violence and psycho-social suffering in Brazil: a clinical-political discussion of the concept of collective trauma
Year: 2026
Type: article
Abstract: This article presents a clinical-political approach to collective trauma, based on authors who offer an intersubjective reading of psychoanalysis in dialogue with feminist theorists, responsible for the political interpretation of trauma. This material engages with accounts of victims’ experiences of urban violence in Brazil. Collective trauma is seen as a disruptive event, for which there are no representational resources. Among its effects are the corrosion of the sociability ties of the social group that experienced the trauma, feelings of impotence, fear, and loss of spatial and temporal orientation. Generally, based on contexts of exclusion and social oppression, collective trauma has been approached from a medicalizing, reductionist perspective, which disregards its structural roots. In contrast, it is proposed that its chronic nature be recognized, requiring political discussion, from which it would be important to legitimize traumatized people as specialists in the experience they have been through. With their protagonism, confronting trauma should involve both political strategies for creating collective mechanisms, emancipation and the struggle for structural changes, as well as clinical ones.
Source: Ciência & Saúde Coletiva
Authors: Lilian Miranda, Michael O’Loughlin
Institutions: Fundação Oswaldo Cruz, Adelphi University
Subfield: Social Psychology
Field: Psychology
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W7203606437