Violence against the elderly: the third part as a psychic regulator

Abstract

The paper proposes reflections on the idea that the ingress of a third part in the relationship marked by violence, especially against the elderly, contributes to alter the dysfunctional model and to stabilize the guiding moral behaviors boundaries. It is not to consider that the aggressor hesitates in front of a third part to avoid the social disapproval or the punishment, but it is to observe that the psyche loosens the bounds with the social conventions in the absence of an element which sustains the constitutive triangulation of the moral space especially in stressful situations. The theoretical readings related to the proposition are made from the psychoanalysis contributions mainly in which it refers to the updating of the paternal role; the systemic model, particularly due the changes that occur in the system when there are alterations in its composition; and the social learning regarding the exposure to models to be adopted as source of vicarious schooling. It still proposes reflections over the aging context in the contemporary society, considering the increase on the number of elderly people, the demands of work which take to the deflation of the inner space in the family and the longevity as a collective reality that the mankind is not aware of and which requires to be signified, invented and appraised.