Resentment

Resentment, a pioneering work by psychoanalyst and writer Maria Rita Kehl, will be published in 2020 by Boitempo, with a new preface and graphic design. The book addresses the conceptualization of resentment from four points of view: the psychoanalytic clinic, the philosophy of Nietzsche and Spinoza, literary production and the political field. Resentment is not a classic psychoanalytic concept; Thus, Maria Rita Kehl mobilizes both her clinical observations and knowledge from other areas to define and explain the affective constellation that forms resentment. “To resent means to attribute responsibility to others for what makes us suffer” – this is how the resentful person leads himself to a dead end: by not taking responsibility for his own situation, he only seeks “imaginary and postponed” revenge ”. It is therefore important to note the relevance of the topic of resentment, present in the social conflicts of those who do not see themselves as agents of social and political life. Only by becoming aware of our own responsibility as subjects of our actions is it possible to give up the passivity – and secondary gains – of the resentful position.