Itineraries

Abstract

This paper points out the role that plays in the present day the dental of social reality in rejecting concernfor our fellow humanbeings, excluding the ominous and ugly side of society and in thisway allowing the maintenance of the feeling of security.The unpleasant perceptions coming from those who are radically different, notablythe poor, are disavowed. This “blindness”, equivalent to supression of perception, leads to the exclusion and segregationof the marginal groups and their problems, from our minds.We underline the deep division of society as a continuum fromdictatorshipsto present day neoliberal economy, corruption andincreasing psycho-social problems linked to poverty.Among the long-term effects of two decades of politicalviolence we emphasize that the ideological operation which substitutessocial plurality for a totalizing dichotomy between what is clean or dirty, is naturally shifted, dividing society horizontaly between the “rich and clean” and the “poor and dirty”, thus creating castoffs, equivalent to garbage. Regarding the phantasies developed in the firstplaying-session of a child living in a poor area in Montevideo, we try to recognize his peculiar subjective position, and examine sometheoretical concepts suggested by the clinical material.