The respiratory drive.
The central phrase linking the coronavirus pandemic to the Black Lives Matter demonstrations to the climate change crisis is “I can't breathe.” What, if anything, does psychoanalysis have to say about breathing? Looking at Freud, Ferenczi, Rank, Winnicott, Lacan, and some current philosophical thoughts, the authors consider a neglected “respiratory drive” and its relationship to the death drive, giving us new insight into this unprecedented moment. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved) (Source: Psychoanalytic Psychology)
Source: Psychoanalytic Psychology - May 20, 2021 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Pandemic diary: 19 fragments.
This text is composed of 19 diary style fragments where I present, from a psychoanalytic perspective, some thoughts on different experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic and its connection with racism and virtual therapy. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved) (Source: Psychoanalytic Psychology)
Source: Psychoanalytic Psychology - May 20, 2021 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
The COVID crisis in psychoanalysis and society: Preliminary thoughts.
A preliminary response to the COVID crisis and the change to telemetric treatment. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved) (Source: Psychoanalytic Psychology)
Source: Psychoanalytic Psychology - May 20, 2021 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Disturbing positions: The crisis and potentials of sociopolitical emotions.
This article considers the special challenges and opportunities of psychoanalytic work amidst sociopolitical crises. Therapists may find themselves sharing the specific concerns animating the patient, especially amidst political turmoil, as we have recently seen in the U.S. This dislocates several aspects of the conventional setting: Asymmetry, the therapist’s expertise, and the usual focus on the individual-dyadic situation. Exploring these particular issues is part of the contemporary movement toward a socially oriented psychoanalysis. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved) (Source: Psychoanalytic Psychology)
Source: Psychoanalytic Psychology - May 20, 2021 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
The pandemic: Thoughts.
I examine some of the behaviors associated with the pandemic and conclude that ordinary psychological formulations (i.e., the relationship between beliefs and action; the level of adaptation) can account for these behaviors. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved) (Source: Psychoanalytic Psychology)
Source: Psychoanalytic Psychology - May 20, 2021 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
At Witz end: Theory in a time of plague.
This article describes the devastating impact the pandemic had on Freud’s life as well as the creative act that literally and figuratively brings the death drive to life. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved) (Source: Psychoanalytic Psychology)
Source: Psychoanalytic Psychology - May 20, 2021 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Navigating the COVID-19 pandemic from Mexico City.
The COVID-19 pandemic forced immediate changes to clinical practice. The article presents some adaptations undertaken during the first outbreak in Mexico City, from March to June 2020. Key modifications were the telephone mode, the boundaries of personal space during the session, and the pace of the analysis. Regressive topics were recurrent, and some patients exhibited paranoid features related with contagion and vulnerability. Feelings of frustration, longing, and loneliness were pervasive, oftentimes accompanied by the symptoms of anxiety and depression, and an overall sense of timelessness was common. As the pandemic i...
Source: Psychoanalytic Psychology - May 20, 2021 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Notes on the pandemic.
The pandemic has changed the landscape of psychoanalytic practice. This paper examines, through the lens of personal history, the nature of the losses inherent in distance work and the nascent potentials for growth in what initially feels like a catastrophic change that challenges the essentials of our analytic identities. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved) (Source: Psychoanalytic Psychology)
Source: Psychoanalytic Psychology - May 20, 2021 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Some pros and cons of psychoanalytic teletherapy.
The author believes that the disembodied nature of Teletherapy, whether visual or auditory, is not conducive to the deep regressive experience of psychoanalysis per se. However, it is amenable to psychoanalytic psychotherapy and can be effective for analyzing unconscious motivations and defenses. In addition, it lends itself to a flexible frame that reveals more about the patient and analyst than in traditional psychoanalysis. This can provide important therapeutic grist for the analytic mill or might lead to unreliable boundaries. Some patients suffering from severe childhood neglect are not able to relate meaningfully to...
Source: Psychoanalytic Psychology - May 20, 2021 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Are you there?
How the remote presence of the analyst directly affects the role of seeing and hearing in analytic work and how the Gaze and the Voice are resituated by electronic media are significant factors in the conditions of current practice. It has long been recognized that physical setting and space play an important role in the experience of psychoanalytic treatment. The presence of the analyst and analys and in the same space, voice, appearance, and proximity are all implicit factors in the processes of transference, discourse, interpretation, and working through. Although remote treatment by electronic media has long been an op...
Source: Psychoanalytic Psychology - May 20, 2021 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
De-interpersonalization.
This clinical essay describes a moment of “de-interpersonalization” that occurred during a psychoanalytic session conducted by videoconference with a patient in the context of the necessary social distancing during the COVID-19 pandemic. It explores some aspects and orthodoxies of contact, distance, and boundary in psychoanalytic work that have implications beyond the present pandemic crisis moment. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved) (Source: Psychoanalytic Psychology)
Source: Psychoanalytic Psychology - May 20, 2021 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Notes on a pandemic.
The author reflects on her experience as an analyst working in Lima, Peru, all through 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic altered the so-called normality. She intersperses her thoughts on the anxiety and fears it generated, and how it felt to analyze over the phone or the internet. Analysts shared the surround with patients: the same uncertainties, hopelessness, fear of getting infected, and dying. Denial played a crucial role in this process—as many people disregarded the lethality of the virus—which remains to be addressed if the pandemic is to be controlled. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved)...
Source: Psychoanalytic Psychology - May 20, 2021 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
A room of my own.
Using the analogy of wartime separations, the author describes the pleasure of being able to reach across distances and connect with patients during the COVID crisis. Being separated from her office and her patients, however, brings up feelings of loss and questions about her identity. Trying to understand why phone sessions seem to work so well with some patients and not with others helps her highlight some of the early losses that people have suffered and how difficult it is to not FaceTime with those patients. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved) (Source: Psychoanalytic Psychology)
Source: Psychoanalytic Psychology - May 20, 2021 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Working in the shadow of COVID-19.
A theoretical exploration of current working conditions in the context of the pandemic is explored. Seeing the experience of many patients and analysts as a form of aprés-coup, that is, a trauma in the present opening earlier trauma. Clinical examples are discussed. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved) (Source: Psychoanalytic Psychology)
Source: Psychoanalytic Psychology - May 20, 2021 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Notes from a pandemic: A year of COVID-19.
This is the introduction for the special section of Psychoanalytic Psychology on COVID-19, which features brief “notes on a pandemic” written by prominent analysts from North America, South America, and Europe. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved) (Source: Psychoanalytic Psychology)
Source: Psychoanalytic Psychology - May 20, 2021 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
