Metamorphosis of patriarchy in the electronic era: social unconscious manifestations and group-analytic perspectives

Abstract

The gradual yet unmistakable subsidence of patriarchal metastructures has emerged as a defining characteristic of contemporary global society. This collapse is not confined to institutional or political arrangements but extends into the symbolic, psychological, and relational foundations of social life. The present article investigates the causes, consequences, and transformations associated with the decline of patriarchal authority, integrating theories of the social unconscious, symbolic mediation, mythological and psychoanalytic concepts, group-analytic processes, and the impact of the electronic era.

The erosion of patriarchy destabilizes traditional social bonds, generating fragmentation, aggregation and massification, polarized subgroup formations, and a crisis of symbolic authority. These processes are significantly intensified by digital technologies, which weaken vertical transmission, accelerate affective contagion, and reorganize authority into performative, algorithmically mediated forms. While overt patriarchal structures decline, their residues persist within the social unconscious through defensive processes, symbolic displacements, and transgenerational transmission.

In therapeutic groups, these transformations emerge as challenges to leadership, boundary confusion, intensified splitting, and the unconscious search for compensatory authority figures. Group-analytic psychotherapy is presented as a privileged space for observing, symbolizing, and working through the psychosocial consequences of patriarchal collapse and electronic mediation. The article argues that contemporary society stands at a crossroads: between regression toward authoritarian substitutes and the emergence of dialogical, ethically grounded, post-patriarchal forms of social bonding capable of containing complexity without domination.