Dor crônica, subjetividade e laço social: a experiência paradoxal da liminaridade

Abstract

Chronic pain is presented as an internal experience that lasts and, when inscribed in the psychic economy, brings great subjective implications for the subjects who suffer from it. Given the specificities raised by this phenomenon, this research aimed to investigate the relationships between subject and social bond that are woven from and in the field of pain. We start from the observation that, in these cases, it is often possible to observe a marked social isolation, which indicates a precarious investment by the subject in his family, affective and professional life. Usually, these withdrawals are exclusively attributed to the effects of painful experiences, known to cause an impoverishment of object investments, which makes the subject fixated on his own suffering. However, isolation, silence, petrification, and lack of appeal to the Other, linked to chronic pain, cannot completely obfuscate the participation of pain in the subject's entanglements in the social bond. Thus, this study addressed how the subject's relationship with his pain participates in his ways of relating to others. This research adopted the psychoanalytic method. A case study was built from an interview with a woman who suffered from chronic pain, who was named Fatima. Following the trail marked by the triad − social bond, subject, and pain − it was possible to trace the frieze of Fatima's life: full of experiences and narratives that go far beyond the descriptions of bodily suffering. The presentation and construction of the case raised as a main problem a paradoxical condition in the face of the bond and in the face of pain, with complex dynamics that escape the usual frameworks. This condition, which was apprehended as the subject's permanence in a peculiar passage zone, was qualified as a state of liminality. From this concept, which comes from the field of anthropology, we extract relevant elements for the discussion of the case, which were worked from the psychoanalytic theory. Among them are: the experiences of loss; the transient condition; pain as an element that is present in this in-between place; the indeterminacy that arises from the unfamiliar, the anguish, the trauma and the jouissance; and the types of impasses that can occur during passages, especially their chronification. Thus, it was possible to substantiate the central hypothesis that the paradoxical condition before the tie found in this case can be understood as a chronicle of a passing state, in which the subject inhabits in a prolonged way what should be an indeterminate and transitory moment in his existence. This state was marked by decentering, pain and indeterminacy, which imply a disruption of the bond, but not only. Chronification was shown to be related to a difficulty in working through the losses and to a depotentialization of the negative and experiences of indeterminacy, in which ruptures are unable to operate in transformation or new connections. The disruptive force contained in these experiences is necessary for the subject to be able to move and complete his passage: from the vertigo of pain, back to desire and life.