Moral Injury and the Failure of Symbolic Mediation: Lacan, Jared Russell, and the Ethics of Care

Title Options for the Blog Post:

"Moral Injury and the Failure of Symbolic Mediation: Lacan, Jared Russell, and the Ethics of Care"
"Beyond Guilt: Psychoanalysis, Sublimation, and the Reconstruction of Ethical Life in Moral Injury"
"War, Trauma, and the Breakdown of Meaning: Lacan, Russell, and the Psychoanalytic Ethics of Care"

Moral injury represents one of the most profound challenges to psychoanalytic theory and clinical practice, revealing how catastrophic events can shatter an individual’s ethical framework and leave them adrift in unresolvable guilt, shame, and existential disorientation. While moral injury has gained significant attention in trauma studies and clinical discourse, its psychoanalytic dimensions remain underexplored—particularly in relation to symbolic mediation and sublimation as crucial mechanisms for ethical integration.

Drawing on Jacques Lacan’s tripartite schema (Imaginary, Symbolic, and Real) and Jared Russell’s theory of sublimation and the failure of symbolic mediation, this essay argues that moral injury emerges not merely as a psychological wound but as a breakdown in the subject’s ability to integrate extreme ethical contradictions into a livable moral framework. This breakdown occurs when cultural and ideological signifiers that once provided ethical orientation collapse under the weight of traumatic experience, leaving the subject unable to symbolically process their moral crisis.

By expanding the psychoanalytic understanding of moral injury through Lacan’s structural model of subjectivity and Russell’s exploration of how unconscious imperatives shape ethical life, we can move toward an ethics of care that does not merely "treat" moral injury but reconstructs the symbolic structures necessary for ethical reparation. In doing so, this approach challenges simplistic moral absolution, cognitive reprocessing, or behavioral interventions that fail to engage with the depth of symbolic rupture that defines moral injury.

Lacan’s Tripartite Schema and the Real of Moral Injury

Imaginary, Symbolic, and Real: The Structuring Orders of Subjectivity

Lacan’s psychoanalytic framework divides human experience into three interdependent orders: the Imaginary, the Symbolic, and the Real. These registers structure how individuals relate to themselves, others, and the world, shaping not only psychic life but also the ethical and moral coordinates by which we navigate existence.

The Imaginary is the realm of identifications and illusions of coherence. It originates in the mirror stage, where the infant first recognizes itself in the mirror and misidentifies this image as a stable, whole self. This is a moment of misrecognition (méconnaissance) because the image is an illusion of unity that conceals the fundamental lack that structures subjectivity. The Imaginary fosters ego formations, rivalries, and defensive identifications, making it the site of many narcissistic and idealized notions of morality.
The Symbolic is the realm of language, law, and social order—the structure that gives meaning to our experiences and defines the rules of engagement with others. It is the domain of ethical codes, religious precepts, legal structures, and cultural narratives that shape what we understand as “right” and “wrong.” Entry into the Symbolic occurs when the subject is inscribed into language, accepting its limitations while gaining access to a world of meaning.
The Real, however, is that which resists meaning—the unassimilable remainder that cannot be captured in language. It is the traumatic kernel of experience that remains outside of the Symbolic, appearing in moments of existential rupture, unresolvable contradiction, or catastrophic realization.

Moral Injury as a Rupture in the Symbolic

Moral injury, from a Lacanian perspective, occurs when the subject encounters an ethical crisis that cannot be symbolized—an act or event that shatters their ability to mediate between their previous moral framework and their traumatic experience. The soldier who has killed in war, the doctor who has made a tragic triage decision, or the whistleblower who has exposed institutional corruption often find themselves caught between irreconcilable ethical demands:

The Imaginary offers moral absolutes—visions of oneself as a "good soldier," "healer," or "protector."
The Symbolic provides law and justification—"I was following orders," "I had no choice," "It was necessary."
The Real shatters both—"I did this, and nothing can ever fully make sense of it."

This rupture leaves the subject stranded, unable to re-integrate themselves into the Symbolic world of meaning. Their previous moral signifiers—duty, honor, righteousness—now appear hollow or contradictory. No rationalization can fully repair the dissonance between what they were supposed to believe and what they have actually done. This unresolved ethical remainder is the Real of moral injury.

Jared Russell and the Failure of Symbolic Mediation

The Role of Cultural Codes in Ethical Subjectivity

Jared Russell expands upon Lacan’s insights by examining how cultural norms and ethical injunctions shape subjectivity at an unconscious level. In Sublimation and Superego: Psychoanalysis Between Two Deaths, Russell argues that moral injury arises when the symbolic structures that mediate between instinct, desire, and cultural law break down under extreme ethical contradiction.

Russell highlights that moral and ethical ideals do not function as purely rational guidelines but rather as unconscious imperatives absorbed long before individuals critically reflect upon them. These unconscious ethical imperatives shape how subjects navigate moral dilemmas, embedding cultural codes deep within their psychic structure.

War and the Breakdown of Ethical Mediation

War is a prime example of this failure of symbolic mediation. The same culture that instills “Thou shalt not kill” as a moral absolute also suspends this prohibition in wartime, demanding that soldiers kill under orders while simultaneously holding them responsible for their actions.

Before war, cultural ideals about morality, heroism, and justice are absorbed unconsciously, functioning as structuring signifiers that guide ethical decision-making.
During war, these ideals are radically inverted, demanding actions that were previously forbidden while still presenting themselves as ethically justified.
After war, the subject is left in an impossible position—expected to reintegrate into a civilian world where those same actions are now condemned.

This collapse of the symbolic mediation of ethical life leaves the subject with an experience that cannot be reconciled with the moral structures they had previously relied upon. Moral injury emerges as an ontological crisis, in which the very categories of "right" and "wrong" no longer provide coherence to the subject’s ethical reality.

Sublimation as a Path to Ethical Repair

For Russell, sublimation provides the only viable means of reconstituting ethical life after moral injury. Sublimation allows for a reworking of ethical contradictions into new symbolic forms—through art, activism, communal mourning, or the creation of new ethical commitments. The goal is not to erase the contradiction but to find a way of living with it, transforming it into something that generates meaning rather than pure guilt or despair.

However, this process is not automatic. Sublimation requires symbolic mediation—it must be structured by communal, cultural, or psychoanalytic interventions that help the subject relocate themselves within an ethical world. Without this, the subject remains trapped in the repetitive self-punishment of the superego, unable to symbolically process what has happened.

Conclusion: Toward an Ethics of Care

If moral injury is fundamentally a failure of symbolic mediation, then an ethics of care must center on restoring the subject’s ability to symbolically integrate their experience. This means that psychoanalysis must go beyond simply acknowledging guilt or exploring the superego’s demands—it must actively support the process of sublimation, the creation of new ethical frameworks, and the re-narration of moral experience.

A Lacanian-Russellian ethics of care does not seek to erase guilt but to transform it, allowing the subject to find new ways of living with irreconcilable ethical contradictions. Through sublimation, communal engagement, and symbolic re-narration, the subject can begin to construct a new moral identity—not free from contradiction, but capable of enduring it.

By grounding the treatment of moral injury in symbolic mediation and sublimation, psychoanalysis can provide not only a theoretical framework but a structured path toward ethical reparation and the restoration of moral agency.