Threatened Caring Culture: On the Sad Topicality of the Medea Myth

ABSTRACT The shameless contempt for the weak and helpless, strangers, migrants and traumatized refugees attacks continuously one of our basic motivational systems, namely to protect and care for our children and descendants. The caring system is an instinctive system anchored in evolutionary biology that ensures our survival as a species. Precisely because it is linked to basic survival strategies, it is suitable for building bridges between polarized groups in crises situations, as is briefly illustrate using the example of a dialog between a Palestinian and an Israeli scientist. On the other hand, the myth of Medea reminds us that the projection of the destruction of the transgenerative capabilities, symbolized by infanticide, onto traumatized refugees and migrant (as Medea) is as old as Western civilization itself. A case study from the MODE study illustrates that understanding the unconscious sources of destructive impulses and fantasies toward the next generation (the Medea fantasy), and working through them in the transference relationship enabled the patient to overcome her chronic depression and to develop a new sense for caring for herself and potential children, for her future. The conclusions discuss how psychoanalytic knowledge on the caring system can be brought into the interdisciplinary dialog on “end‐time fascism.”