The origins of evil: The case of the god Pan

We will develop the hypothesis that if violence is inherent to life, to that which constitutes our humanity, it is because primarily the psyche of the subject is subjected to an unspeakable violence. This violence is in its origins, a sensory violence, which acts on the subject before the latter has recourse to it. This violence of sensations about which it can be established that it has sound violence as its paradigm precisely because of the two main characteristics of sound: the absence of limits and the absence of concreteness. The myth of the god Pan helps us to think about what extent sound violence, when it is not integrated, is at the origin of the movements of perpetrated violence. In the myth, the original sound violence can be interpreted as an early traumatic element (before the acquisition of verbal language) that will repeat itself over and over again in an attempt to be assimilated. In other words, Pan's violent acts are to be understood as the repetition of the sonic violence suffered early on as a result of maternal abandonment. It is with sound that the god Pan sows terror and panic in the armies and the herds. Thus, the myth of Pan invites us to consider that at the dawn of life, sound must be integrated (assimilated) so that the psychic space of the child can be formed. But at that point in life, the young child does not yet possess the necessary capacities for representation and it is then up to the environment to lend him its own sound envelope in order to stem the inevitable sonic violence (this is what Pan lacks). His encounter with music will allow him to metabolize his sound experience somewhat and not to sink completely into madness. (C) 2022 Elsevier Masson SAS. All rights reserved.