Interpretive categories, implicit representations and resistance against violence in relationships. A male-oriented gender interpretation

Confrontation with violence in intimate relationships requires interpretive categories and approaches that can be measured against the complexity of the phenomenon and the pervasiveness of the culture that it stems from. A critical reflection on the social construct of masculinity can prevent the neutralization of violence or its naturalization: two aspects of the more general tendency to remove it from our ‘normality’. An analysis of the public discourse on violence shows that even institutional interventions of contrast and media narratives, while condemning abusive and violent behavior, reproduce and convey stereotypical representations that are the substrate on which they grow. In this context, there is a need for reflection on the social responsibility of psychoanalytic thinking as ‘expert knowledge’, which society turns to in order to interpret conflicts and contradictions whose vulgate often proposes models based on complementarity between functions attributed to the two sexes, stiffening experiences, conflicts and perceptions of change.