ICLO-NLS Introductory Seminar - Violence. Real, Symbolic, Imaginary

Final Seminar of the Introductory Seminar Series 2026

Violence

Real – Symbolic – Imaginary

Today in our interconnected world, violence is everywhere. On our screens we receive daily reports of violence from around the world ranging from the horrors of war to mass shootings, from terrorist acts to reports of M**der, alongside reports of attacks on individuals or groups by other individuals or groups which are frequently racially, ideologically, or politically motivated and in the extreme manifested itself in the Nazi death camps. There are also the violent acts covering all forms of domestic abuse, abuse and neglect of children and all forms of discrimination and coercion, which not only affect a person materially but also usually seek to silence the victim, depriving them of their voice.

In a famous passage in Civilization and Its Discontents (1930) Sigmund Freud states, one’s neighbour is “…not only a potential helper or sexual object, but also someone who tempts them to satisfy their aggressiveness on him, to exploit his capacity for work without compensation, to use him sexually without his consent, to seize his possessions, to humiliate him, to cause him pain, to torture and to K*ll him. Homo homini lupus [Man is wolf to man]. Who in the face of all his experience of life and of history, will have the courage to dispute this assertion?” Freud argues in this work that it is civilisation, its civilising effect, that allows the subject to temper and suppress such base impulses. The “agency” Freud identifies with this function, in his tripartite view of the mind, is the superego alongside the ideal ego. The former contains prohibitions that would limit what a subject is prepared to do while the latter contain ideals and points of identification that guide the subject in their life choices.

In Why War? (1932), an exchange of letters between Freud and Einstein, Freud adds that “right” and the rule of law only overcomes “might” by virtue of the union of the many, bound together within a community, that thereby, can overcome the arbitrary exercise of power and brute violence. We see here that psychoanalysis tends to focus on aggression, and behind this on what Freud termed the “death drive”, rather than on specific forms of violence though the latter also deserve to be researched and elucidated. Importantly, this includes aggression towards the self, from various forms of self-harm up to, and including, suicide.

Starting with Jacques Lacan’s early studies of violent acts, particularly in paranoia, alongside his 1948 paper Aggressiveness in Psychoanalysis, this Introductory Seminars will seek to elucidate what can be said about violence and aggression by focusing on the three registers of human experience as developed by Lacan. Namely, the Real, the Symbolic and the Imaginary. The focus will be wide ranging, since at one level committed violence affects us in the Real, as trauma, while at another level the resources of both the Symbolic and the Imaginary are inevitably deployed in inciting violent acts. It is also to the resources of the Symbolic and Imaginary that speaking-beings resort to defend themselves against the Real.

There will be two presentations at this seminar followed by ample time for discussion. Participants can attend this Seminar Series both in person and online.

Responsible: Caroline Heanue, Rik Loose, Raphael Montague and Alan Rowan

with the participation of: Miles Link, Nefeli Paraskevi Papadaki and Eva Sophie Reinhofer

Event Venue

Carmelite Community Centre, 56 Aungier Street, Dublin 2, Ireland

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