1. Home
2. Culture
3. René Kaës: It Is Through Crisis That Man Fully Becomes a Man

If we consider Lebanon to be in a post-war period, despite a fragile ceasefire, the crisis — described by René Kaës as a foundational experience — opens a transformative space between rupture and suture.

“It is through crisis that a man creates himself as a man, and history moves between crisis and resolution, rupture and suture” — René Kaës.

Can this insight from psychoanalyst René Kaës inspire us to move past procrastination, self-loathing, hatred toward others or the repetition of destructive behaviors?

The shadows of our distant and recent past will undoubtedly linger. Yet, we stand at a new crossroads: the time after war, after collective crisis and after personal turmoil stirred by pervasive violence. This is a time that calls for reconstruction — a time that demands we create both subjective and collective existence capable of renewal.

It is also a moment to confront another, more insidious conflict: the battle between founding and destructive drives.

Sigmund Freud suggested that internal conflicts leading to crises are intrinsic to human development. An individual's life is defined by identity crises and unconscious tensions, arising from the dynamic interplay of psychic structures, particularly the perpetual tension between life and death drives.

Jacques Lacan described crisis as a “fall into the Real,” a moment when one confronts what defies representation and escapes symbolization. He emphasized that these moments of rupture are essential to the formation of the self, as they enable a reorganization of the relationships between the symbolic, the imaginary and the real.

René Kaës’ concept of “suture” provides profound insight into the process of psychological healing that unfolds after a crisis. This process entails symbolization, narrative reconstruction and the reintegration of critical experiences into a renewed psychic framework. Through this careful elaboration, individuals restore continuity in their life story, integrate the strangeness and negativity revealed by the crisis and rebuild vital connections with their environment.

In Crisis, Rupture, and Transcendence, Kaës portrays the crisis as a transformative experience — an existential turning point that compels individuals to abandon a familiar, comforting world and venture into uncharted territories. Crises, while often defined by periods of suffering, anxiety, confusion and psychic disarray, also serve as catalysts for renewal and reconstruction. The arc of an individual’s story is shaped by the perpetual interplay of rupture, resolution and recovery — a dynamic through which identity is forged and redefined.

Between rupture and suture unfolds a vital transitional space where emotional, social and psychological forces converge, weaving together the threads of an individual’s uniqueness. This liminal realm forms the very crucible of psychic transformation.

Kaës envisions the subject as fundamentally “singular plural,” a being that emerges through connections with others, develops within intersubjectivity and exists only in relation to more than one other. The subject in crisis is never isolated; it is embedded in a network of alliances and ruptures, of conscious and unconscious bonds linking it to groups of belonging such as family, institutions and the sociocultural environment. Crisis tests these narcissistic contracts and pacts that structure our collective existence, revealing the vulnerabilities within our shared frameworks.

In collective crises — whether wars, disasters or pandemics — the entire structure of social connection is disrupted. The social systems that uphold our sense of continuity and psychological safety begin to falter, giving rise to primal anxieties of fragmentation and loss. Yet, these moments of shared upheaval offer an opportunity to rebuild intersubjective alliances and creatively reimagine the ways of coexistence. New pacts are formed, new solidarities emerge, allowing us to confront adversity and find renewed meaning in the face of trauma.

This perspective of crisis as a transformative moment aligns with the view of the subject as constantly shaped by a dialectic of psychic disorganization and reorganization, always in relation to the other and the social.