Social Humiliation - a Political Problem into Psychology

Abstract

This paper is based upon participant research carried out in Vila Joanisa, a desinfranchised and poor district of São Paulo. As a social psychologist, the author has worked in Youth Centers, community-based groups both organized and coordinated by women. The aim o f this paper is to discribe and discuss social humiliation, defined as a singular kind of anguish triggered by class inequality trauma. The psychological and political concepts of social humiliation were integrated into a theoretical framework informed by marxism and psychoanalisis.