About the Conference

Disavowal, Pain and Suffering in today's World

The choice of the main theme of the congress is neither accidental nor arbitrary. It intends to gather central concerns in Ferenczi's work, and to establish bridges with contemporary psychic and social issues.

The term "disavowal" refers to a specific form of psychic violence: that which denies or invalidates the suffering of the other. Ferenczi showed how, in situations of abuse or violence, the child - in a position of extreme vulnerability - is forced to renounce his or her experience and assume the version imposed by the adult, generally invested with authority or affection. This operation generates a deep subjective split: the child fragments himself in order to preserve the link with the one who, paradoxically, hurts him.

This logic of disavowal has been expanded and systematized at the social level, giving rise to what we can call a "social disavowal": a collective mechanism by which the voices of the most vulnerable - victims of war, forced migration, inequality or gender violence - are denied, minimized or silenced by those in positions of power.

In this context, the split is no longer only subjective and alienating, but collective: a division between those who suffer the consequences of violence and those who, from a dominant position, deny or legitimize it, thus perpetuating the damage and making it difficult for this suffering to be recognized, understood and transformed into an experience endowed with meaning.

From this perspective, it is necessary to differentiate between the experience of "pain" and the experience of "suffering". Pain is inherent to human existence. Freud and Ferenczi agree that it must be recognized, "affirmed" and symbolically elaborated in order to be integrated as an experience. In contrast, suffering arises from asymmetrical power relations. In Ferenczi's work, it appears when the subject, wounded and vulnerable, must deny his experience in order to maintain the link with the one who harms him. This suffering cannot be elaborated if it is not recognized and symbolized by another.

When this elaboration is not achieved, an identification with the aggressor may emerge, which perpetuates abusive relationships, naturalizing domination. Suffering then becomes a tool of control and coercion, a true "terrorism of suffering" that prevents reparation and re-enforces social forms of exclusion.

We speak of the "today's world" because we want to emphasize the contemporary conditions that aggravate psychic discomfort. Among them, "symbolic violence" stands out, which is not exercised physically but through normative discourses and social hierarchies that silence and exclude. It manifests itself in multiple spheres -family, school, culture- and limits the subject's capacity to name his or her discomfort, even leading to forms of alienation and subjective destructuring.

Thus, the concept of symbolic violence helps us to understand how psychic suffering is reproduced in dominant discourses and naturalized social practices. Even the therapeutic device itself, if it is not reviewed, can become a space of retraumatization. As Civitarese reminds us, psychoanalysis can be both emancipating and alienating.

In this framework, Ferenczi's thought acquires a remarkable relevance. His radical ethics of listening, his attention to disavowed trauma and his critique of technical neutrality offer fundamental tools to accompany the suffering that has not yet been able to be said.

In short, the theme of this 15th Congress is an invitation to reflect on Ferenczi's work from the urgency of the present, where pain is still part of life, but suffering - the result of denial and abuse of power - demands an ethical, clinical and human listening.