EDITORIAL

Surrounding the work Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego by Sigmund Freud

Betty Bernardo Fuks; Andréa Guerra; Fábio Santos Bispo; Mariana Mollica da Costa Ribeiro

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In 2021, the Postgraduate Program in Psychoanalysis, Health and Society held, at the XI Doctoral Meeting, a tribute to the 100th anniversary of Sigmund Freud's book – Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego. Continuing the event, the journal Trivium: Estudos Interdisciplinares, in collaboration with Coletivo Ocupação Psicanalítico, which brings together psychoanalysts and researchers from Minas Gerais (UFMG, through PSILACS - Núcleo Psicanálise e laço social no contemporâneo), from Espírito Santo (Federal University of Espírito Santo), Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ's Postgraduate Program in Psychoanalytic Theory) and Bahia (Federal University of Recôncavo Baiano) – offers, in this number edition, an article series that attest to the theoretical and clinical importance of the works presented at the event and the acuity with which some psychoanalysts undertake a critique of contemporaneity and have been deepening interdisciplinary studies about the various faces of xenophobia: racism, homophobia, antifeminism, etc. Let us then proceed to the presentation of the texts disposed in three sections.

Opening the "Metapsychological Foundations" section, Vera Pollo, with a rigorous 1921 classic reinterpretation, recovers its foundations to point out how the masses regent is a pulsional arrangement, mobilized by the leader's function and with its foundations on the identification and love processes. Her text renews, based on a Lacanian contribution to the theory, the thesis that the identification with the object insignia at the level of the Ego Ideal (Ideal Ich), even reduced to a stupid and irrelevant detail, is the common denominator shared as the Ideal Ego (Ich-Ideal). Exploring this premise, the author shows the difference between the masses logic and the collective logic, in which "what is at stake is not the identification with the Other of the insignia, but with the Other of desire, which is castrated and bears the lack". Then, Ana Maria Rudge, in a rich and dense theoretical argument, starts from the assumed importance by the leader in the masses, highlighting the importance of what Freud designates as Father and that, later, receives the configuration of "Other". Her article discusses the structuring function of the Father in "Totem and Taboo", following the Freudian formulation that the mass is the idealist transposition of the primitive horde, founded on the dead Father as the one who holds the symbolic law, in order to discuss the way in which the Murdered "Mythical Father" always threatens to resurrect, represented by a totem or an idealized leader. With Piera Aulagnier, the author recovers the way in which the identification paths are able to bypass the inevitable conflicts between Eros and Thanatos, as well as the identification conflicts between the Ego and the Ideal Ego (Ich-Ideal). Finally, Gloria Sadala is devoted to the analysis of mass phenomena, such as different forms of fanaticism or social networks, considering the current political situation in different countries. The author comes back to the metapsychological issues developed on the 1921 text, seeking to delimit what, eventually, would have changed in its logic, given the sociocultural transformations that took place over 100 years. Her article updates Freud's work, depicting its central importance even nowdays for reading mass phenomena in actuality.

The section "On the masses and minorities" presents, in a very forceful and detailed way, the Freudian text critical vocation to the domination and violence discourses exercised through the masses. If we still find certain ambiguous uses of psychoanalysis against popular resistance movements to oppression, right on the first article Auterives Maciel Júnior accuses a radical difference between the masses authoritarianism and other logics of collective minority organization. From the concepts of multitude, minority devenir and, finally, minority multitude, the author opens the field for thinking about heterogeneous movements linked to diversity. In sequence, Betty Fuks rescues the tragic account of the Rosa Graf's death, Sigmund Freud's sister, by the Nazis, to point out the oracular character of the Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego text, insofar as it anticipates the logic of the Nazi-fascism rise; Andréa Guerra deepens the Freudian criticism framework by rescuing the racist origin from the first studies on multitude crowds. It warns us of the risk that forgetting this history and ignoring all the colonial rationality that legitimized it constitute the perpetuation of an epistemic logic. Without this reference, it is impossible to discern the weight of the Freudian subversion. The following article resumes from this point, analyzing the colonial mass constitution and stressing how much the race fiction forged an Ideal Ego (Ideal-Ich) attached to whiteness, which directs hatred against Amerindian and African peoples. Mariana Mollica, Nayara Paulina Rosa and Geisa de Assis also point out that precisely these peoples, massacred and persecuted, could constitute, from the quilombos, a distinct collective logic, related to Freudian punctuations about ephemeral groups, crowds and, in folklore, subversive ethics inventions in relation to the group logic that guides the colonialism. José Maurício Loures and Cláudia F. Melo end this section highlighting, from the female leadership in UN peace missions, another political organization figure that moves beyond the mass centered on the Father's authority, envisioning, in the role of women in places of power, possibilities for less violent social ties.

The third section, "The masses in the digital age", allows to draw consequences from the honored work to the apprehension of political and social issues that involve neoliberalism and digital network technologies. The central point of the unconscious and affections manipulation through the mass focuses, for Freud, on the subjects relationship with the totalitarian leader, which will gain other frames nowadays. Antonio Quinet brings back Freud from Lacan, in a dialogue with Foucault and Dabord, and shows that, on the "scopic society"command post is the object "Le plus de regarde". His article supports the idea that the anonymous Other who watches over us interferes in the consuming and taking a political stand subjective ways. This diagnosis serves as a kind of preliminary question to the following article by Fábio Santos, Melissa Festa and Beatriz O. da Silva reading. The authors question how the relationship between knowledge and truth takes place, which is at the fakenews viralization foundation and the virtual bonds establishment, led by a cynical dimension of the Other's place pulverization. The authors' reflections on the means by which Bolsonarism influences subjectivity through virtual networks deserve special attention, both in terms of the social and political dimensions.

The review of the book 100 years of Psychology of the Masses: updating and reflection, written by Fidias G. Siqueira and Alessandro Pereira dos Santos, draws attention to the richness of texts by psychoanalysts who were able to extract their own words from the 1921 work. Closing this number edition, the critical commentary by Marcelo F. Gomes "Abdias Nascimento and the Museum of Black Art in Inhotim: some crossroads", is an invitation to visit the Abadias Nascimento's work retrospective in honor of the 10th anniversary of his death, at the Instituto Inhotim. An exhibition that reflects, on the one hand, the racism complexity in Brazil and, on the other, the black people resistance to violence through the insistence on preserving their life, culture and ancestry.