Seguridad, temor y poder: reflexiones sobre la identidad y la vulnerabilidad en la sociedad contemporánea

Abstract

The year 2025 begins with increased fears about security, both in Chile and around the world. From the modern era to the present day, security has been both an individual and collective value and aspiration, guaranteeing citizens the right to live in peace, to be respected in their diversity and to participate in personal and community decisions. Etymologically, security (securitas) refers to a psychological, social and material state in which anxieties, problems and concerns about threats and dangers are absent. It is not surprising that security has become a central topic of debate and political dispute as it touches on the most intimate fears of individuals and communities: the fear of dispossession, vulnerability, death. The study of psychology and psychoanalysis, always linked to the social sciences, teaches us how in the psychic life of individuals and peoples, two opposing forces would constantly confront each other: that of freedom, which needs exchange with otherness in order to broaden the horizon of the world; and that of identity and belonging, which implies a primary tendency to defend oneself, to protect oneself from the world, experienced as a threat where the external, the alien, coincides with the hostile. In these times of unprecedented push for security, we forget that in life we are all foreigners, and that therefore, identity, belonging, cannot do without the figure of hospitality if it is not to exhaust itself, falling into death. Following this drift, it would be appropriate to accept the invitation made to us by each contributor to this issue of Psicoperspectivas to learn about the experiences of various vulnerable groups in the current scenarios of worsening social conflicts; among them: homeless people, the elderly, children in protection systems and transgender people.