“HOMELESS FROM WITHIN”: CARE, CHILDHOOD, AND THE MAKING OF PSYCHOSOCIAL SUFFERING

Abstract

This article analyzes the production of psychosocial suffering through a singular case of childhood marked by continuous care and partial material stability, yet traversed by the absence of subjective shelter. In dialogue with critical social psychology, the case is mobilized not as a representative example, but as an analyzer, a conceptual operator, and a point where historical, normative, and affective forces implicated in the social production of childhoods condense. It argues that certain forms of care, by privileging adaptation, functionality, and affective silencing, can generate specific modes of suffering that do not appear as rupture, but as hyperfunctioning, shame around pleasure, and difficulty inhabiting stable bonds in adult life. By speaking of childhoods in the plural, the text denaturalizes hegemonic models of care and proposes understanding suffering not as an individual failure, but as a relational effect that is socially produced. The article contributes to the critical debate on childhood, care, and mental health by highlighting forms of suffering that are seldom named in psychosocial literature.