Social perversion and passion for instrumentality

the contemporary relevance of Calligaris’s thesis

Abstract

This review critically examines O grupo e o mal: estudo sobre a perversão social, by Contardo Calligaris, originally published as his doctoral dissertation and recently translated into Portuguese, highlighting the theoretical relevance of the concept of social perversion for understanding the relationships among subjectivity, group dynamics, and legitimized violence. In dialogue with Sigmund Freud and Hannah Arendt, Calligaris argues that evil does not arise from a monstrous essence but from a subjective structure marked by the “passion for instrumentality,” in which the subject finds psychic satisfaction in becoming an instrument of a collective ideal, often embodied by the State or a leader, while simultaneously reducing the other to the status of an object. This review emphasizes the distinction between sexual perversion and social perversion, underscoring that the latter is not limited to a deviation in instinctual aims but rather constitutes a structural organization involving the objectification of the other and the subject's submission to an instrumental logic. In this context, mass phenomena favor the partial suspension of repression and reinforce identificatory processes that weaken subjective responsibility, enabling the legitimation of violent practices under the justification of a supposed common good. By articulating clinical practice, psychoanalytic theory, and sociopolitical analysis, Calligaris reaffirms the Freudian thesis that individual psychology is, from the outset, also social psychology. It is concluded that the concept of social perversion constitutes a fundamental conceptual tool for understanding contemporary phenomena of subjective adherence to authoritarian ideals, demonstrating the continuing relevance and critical potential of psychoanalysis for the analysis of the social bond.