EPV1157 - Beyond Reason: Pandemic Resistance, Ontological Risk, and Behavioural Disintegration in Crisis Contexts
EPV1157
Beyond Reason: Pandemic Resistance, Ontological Risk, and Behavioural Disintegration in Crisis Contexts
C. Lazzari 1,*
1Psychiatry, International Centre for Healthcare and Medical Education (ICHME), London, United Kingdom
Introduction: Pandemics redefine more than epidemiological terrain—they fragment the ontological coherence of daily life. COVID-19 and HIV/AIDS both revealed that behaviour under crisis conditions cannot be fully explained by rationalist models or epidemiological logic. Instead, pandemic responses emerge from layered existential orientations shaped by perception, affect, and symbolic meaning.
Objectives: To explore resistance to public health measures as a form of ontological dislocation and psychological enactment. This paper introduces the Quadruplex Helix framework as a model for understanding how unconscious drives, affective epistemologies, and social ontologies across relational levels shape dissemination resistance and critical incidents.
Methods: A philosophical–psychoanalytic approach was adopted, integrating process ontology, phenomenology, and clinical literature. Textual analysis of case reports, ethnographic observations, and psychoanalytic theory (e.g., Samos Syndrome, irrationalism, solipsism) informed the development of a four-tier framework mapping behavioural responses across micro (individual), meso (dyadic), macro (peer), and mega (cultural) scales.
Results: Resistance to preventive measures was observed not as ignorance but as an ambivalent negotiation of bodily boundaries and existential threat. Clinical and ethnographic findings revealed patterns of unconscious intent, such as self-endangerment, denial, and psychic conflict. The Quadruplex Helix delineated how different social strata produce distinctive behavioural expressions, including symbolic defiance, folie à deux dynamics, and cultural exceptionalism.
Helix Level |
Domain |
Key Focus |
Behavioural Expression |
|
Micro |
Individual |
Unconscious drives; psychic conflict; boundary dissolution |
Self-endangerment, denial, symbolic refusal |
|
Meso |
Dyadic (interpersonal) |
Relational distortion; affective contagion; folie à deux dynamics |
Shared irrationalism, mutual reinforcement of resistant behaviours |
|
Macro |
Peer group |
Collective enactment; group identity; affective epistemologies |
Symbolic defiance, echo chambers, normative pushback |
|
Mega |
Cultural/societal |
Mythic framing; national exceptionalism; ontological narratives |
Cultural immunity myths, ideological resistance, existential reenactment |
Conclusions: Pandemic behaviours often emerge as meaning-making strategies under existential pressure, rather than as failures of knowledge. By reframing these actions through an ontologically informed lens, psychiatric models can better interpret disintegration of self–world boundaries, unconscious drives, and the phenomenology of risk. Future crisis interventions must recognise the symbolic, emotional, and relational architectures that shape public health behaviour.
Disclosure of Interest: None Declared