When Pathos becomes Ethos. A sketch of contemporary psychosocial dependency
Traditionally, reflections on phenomena of dependency mainly gravitate around individual approaches. It is clearly the individual, objectively suffering (toxicity) body which induces the psychological states which, in turn, produce the individual behaviours which repeat these same states of suffering. Even with the appearance of “social” problems, such as gambling, it is tempting to return the analysis again to the question of the individual: there is a “good” form of gambling (reasonable) and a “bad” form of gambling (compulsive gambling), with the difference based on a principle of individual or “local” responsibility (family, living environment, life history, etc.). But, what occurs when instinctual behaviours are generalized (hyper-consumption, hyper-sexuality, dependency on video games and socio-numeric media, etc.), and an entire society is filled with the logic of enjoyment? And what happens if this logic is closely integrated in the economic, ideological and political strata of social life? We believe that this problem reiterates the pertinence of a psycho-sociological approach–if not socio-psychological–in order to initiate the following reflection: is it possible that certain behaviours and certain social logics have, in addition to the individual harmful effects, negative effects for society itself? To this end, it is necessary to establish the relations and limits of the filiation between psychology and sociology, raise the complex issue of social normativity and to try to identify an objectifying position from which conclusions could be identified.