The usual intolerance and present one: a psychoanalytic view

Abstract

In this article, I analyze the roots of intolerance from a psychoanalytic perspective, as well as the ways it has been taken in our politic life in the last years. At first, I expose a relation between intolerance and the Ego origin; in order to understand what changes in the measure of what is or isn’t tolerable in distinct contexts. After that, I analyze the psychosocial conditions for the tolerance of the Other, sustaining that a failure in the symbolic intermediation is an important issue in the contemporary forms of intolerance. From that failure, the relation with ideas and persons remains on an imaginary level, and the reflection ability in inhibited, as it is in a fetish. My conclusion is that a symbolic intermediation between the Ego and the other is a condition to a tolerant coexistence.

Keywords

• intolerância
• vida política
• contemporaneidade
• psicanálise