Neurose obsessiva e contemporaneidade: considerações sobre a temporalidade e o discurso capitalista e seus desdobramentos no sofrimento psíquico em mulheres

Abstract

This paper addresses obsessive neurosis in contemporary society, starting from the premise that the social configuration marked by the sensation of the acceleration of time and by capitalist discourse favors the obsessive discourse as a defense against castration. The objectives of this research were: to discuss how obsessive symptoms relate to the experience of temporality today, and subsequently, to articulate capitalist discourse with the incidence of obsessive discourse in women. It was observed that the sensation of temporal acceleration is related to the impoverishment of subjective experience and the degradation of the social bond, which can intensify psychic suffering in contemporary times. It was concluded that it is impossible to decouple social discourse from the subject's psychic constitution, and that psychic suffering points to a certain introjection of a capitalist rationality of private life management. In capitalist society, consumer objects take the place of an imaginary phallus in an attempt to plug the subject's structural lack, which aligns with the type of defense in obsessive neurosis that denies desire. Regarding female obsessive neurosis, the conclusion reached is that obsessive neurosis today is independent of sex or gender, since all subjects, regardless of sex or gender identity, are traversed by castration, which belongs to the field of the symbolic. Despite this, subjects are still traversed by the imaginary dimension of the phallus, which makes female obsessive neurosis particularly devastating due to the imaginary notion that the phallus—the signifier of completeness—is related to the phallus as a sexual organ and its supposed substitutes. The woman becomes entangled in a discourse of phallic signification that hinders her from confronting her desire. This highlights the importance of investigating contemporary symptoms while keeping in mind that the subject is traversed by their time; therefore, forms of suffering depend on the prevailing social organization of a given period. For this investigation, a literature review was conducted, drawing on classical Freudian texts as well as contemporary academic productions