The loss of the soul and the myth of the living dead. A Jungian approach to a mental health problem in a public hospital in Buenos Aires.

Abstract

This study is about the intervention carried out by a group of professionals from the Interdisciplinary Mental Health Team of the Emergencies Department in a public hospital in Buenos Aires City between 2017 and 2019. It arose from the need to respond to a public health problem related to the increasing number of patients living in situations involving homelessness, drug abuse, violent behaviour and criminal background. The multiple facets of this problem made us think about the impossibility of addressing it only in the individual sense of each patient. We were forced to admit that we were facing a problem of a complex, collective, social and institutional order, which the predominant medical model had neither been able to handle nor understand. We sought to include a Jungian approach to this contemporary problem found in large Latin American cities. Amplifying a symbolic base allowed us to understand creatively the complexity of the phenomenon, which could not be read in any manner other than the social and collective.