Les rapports domestiques entre amour et domination

Abstract

The recurrence of men's dominant relationship over women across different societies constitutes one of anthropology's and sociology's essential questions. This article succinctly presents labor psychodynamics' contribution to the analysis of this question. Labor psychodynamics shows how the preoccupations concerning identity and mental health contribute to the structuring of human conduct at the workplace : faced with the suffering caused by occupational constraints, the individual constructs defense strategies which can be showed to be strongly dependent on gender ; these defense strategies also have a powerful effect on the economy of relations within the private space. Even if sexuality cannot be reduced to a game of social relations, it cannot be denied that the economy of love relationships prompts the dynamics of domination-servitude in a very specific manner. It is perhaps from this perspective that the universal mechanisms of servitude and domination could be identified, but it would be necessary to classify them according to a non-accounted-for aspect of social theory : namely, that before adults, individuals were children and have, as such, all lived the inaugural experience of (physical and psychic) inequality with respect to adults. The destiny carved from this inequality is at the core of the questions concerning identity, mental health, sexuality, and even love, issues which are all at stake in the disputes for the allocation of household work and the social relationships of reproduction. Maybe, we should admit that the stakes concerning mental health which are put into play by marital relationships contribute to perpetuate the social relationship of servitude as well as that of domination (both in heterosexual and homosexual couples).