Beyond Reason: Pandemic Resistance, Ontological Risk, and Behavioural Disintegration in Crisis Contexts
C. LazzariIntroduction
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.
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