PSYCHOLOGY IN TIMES OF CRISIS. PSYCHOLOGY AND HUMAN RIGHTS

Abstract

228 word that seeks to frame reality more than others nowadays is imposed and repeated ad nauseam in an attempt to define the times in which we live. It is a word that is accompanied by a set of measures, justifications and actions, including determining emotions or ones that aim to be determinants of everything that happens. We are referring to the term “crisis”. Although, by definition, it could be said that a crisis is a momentary thing for which a timely and temporary response effort is required, for years a framework of interpretation of reality has been maintained that speaks of a deep and permanent crisis that, therefore, forces us to always be taking exceptional and unique measures. An effort that we would not be asked to make in other circumstances. This is about suggesting that we live in a state of crisis, in a state of shock, in permanent trauma, which justifies cuts in social policies, in resources, in benefits and even in freedoms or major social attainments. A crisis accompanied or spiced up by a primary emotion, as powerful as it is dangerous: fear, a global fear that individualizes us and makes us more vulnerable. A global framework of interpretation that involves a change of society using fear and crisis as allies and dominant frameworks of interpretation. A paradigm of fear and crisis that is incentivized and empowered in a planned, structured and thought-out way with the aim of changing our society and our way of life, including our values. It is about establishing a framework of interpretation that divides and individualizes us, that makes us think exclusively of our own interest, of saving what we can, of saving ourselves in a world at war, in a permanent struggle in which only the strongest survive, in which the competition is constant and fierce. This is reflected in texts such as Rosa (2008), Kleim (2007), Bauman (2007), Galeano (1993), and Fouce et al (2015). This fear and crisis lead to the search for identity shelters, to differentiate between “my people” and others, to set boundaries and barriers, to divide and break the collective response structures, the proliferation of excluding flags and symbols: the one that receives an economic benefit against the one who does not, the one who has a job versus the one who does not, the Spaniard versus the foreigner, and so on. Individualism and xenophobia, fear, flags and walls, in which simple culprits are constructed, scapegoats that we blame for our precarious situation and permanent crisis, and which are used to justify the necessary cuts. The aim is to break down collective and community response structures, to establish a framework in which the main aim is to “save oneself” as much as possible, in fierce competition with the different other, with the others that are not my people. It is about establishing individualistic and self-blaming responses and explanations: we are the person responsible for what happens to us, we are the sick person. “We are living above our means” is perhaps the most famous phrase that summarizes this framework of interpretation. Thus we return, in addition, to charitable response systems based on beneficence and welfarism, the old approaches of helping the poor so that they allow themselves to be helped, not out of justice but rather out of charity, not because it is a right but rather in a “kind” way. PSYCHOLOGY IN TIMES OF CRISIS. PSYCHOLOGY AND HUMAN RIGHTS