Ordinary Trauma, Sudden Changeability, and the Bond Between Generations

Abstract

The authors illustrate the ideas of the economy of flexibility and of the dysfunctional alteration of the economy of flexibility. They reflect on a social phenomenon of our time that entails the petrification of variables that should remain flexible and the liquefaction of variables that should enjoy stability and that instead change in a repeated and sudden manner, exposing the humans involved to a condition of ordinary trauma. They illustrate an adaptation to ordinary trauma that is spreading: sudden changeability, that is, the predisposition to sudden change. They describe sudden changeability in terms of a predisposition to the sudden creative overcoming of double-bind situations. Finally, they identify, in cultivating gratuitous manifestations of love, the possibility of contributing to avoiding the possible pathological outcomes of double-bind situations and of contributing to safeguarding the relationship between generations.