Pandemic psychoanalysis

Am J Psychoanal. 2021 Dec;81(4):467-479. doi: 10.1057/s11231-021-09328-5.

Abstract

Our clinical practice is contextualized by a co-participant trauma constituted by a confluence of upheavals-pandemic, politics, an epistemological crisis, pervasive distrust of expertise and evidence. Psychoanalytic work, parallel to the external world, has become defamiliarized, if not, at sometimes unrecognizable. The affect on the frame and the boundaries of the therapeutic frame and of the psychoanalytic institution are explored with an awareness of the uncertainty of the future. The experience of the onset of the pandemic is discussed with awareness of an unknown future.

Keywords: COVID; epistemological crisis; frame; pandemic; trauma.

MeSH terms

  • Humans
  • Pandemics
  • Politics
  • Psychoanalysis*
  • Psychoanalytic Therapy*