ABSTRACT
This paper describes the psychoanalytic treatment of a woman patient during the first six months of the COVID-19 pandemic, when the setting was profoundly disrupted and was transferred from in-person psychoanalysis to telephone sessions. Drawing on Bleger's formulations on the construction of the analytic frame and on André Green's on the function of the framing structure in the construction and elaboration of phantasy life, the case study shows how, in the absence of the physicality of the setting, the most primitive anxieties about the symbiotic relationship with the mother were expressed and contained in the transference and countertransference in the analysis. The author offers some considerations about the notion of "background of the uncanny", derived from Yolanda Gampel, which draws attention to the challenges when both patient and analyst are inserted into the same traumatic wider context. It is suggested that the production of an art object by the patient during this period represents a step in the elaboration of the work of mourning and towards symbolization.
Subject(s)
COVID-19/prevention & control , Grief , Love , Mental Disorders/therapy , Physical Distancing , Psychoanalytic Therapy/methods , Telemedicine/methods , Adult , Countertransference , Fantasy , Female , Humans , Mental Disorders/psychology , Pandemics , SARS-CoV-2 , Symbolism , Transference, PsychologyABSTRACT
As part of this work, we propose to understand the global epidemic of COVID-19 coronavirus, as a sociobiological phenomenon. To carry out our reflection, we will base ourselves on a psychological listening experience (in a psychoanalytic orientation) conducted during the Nice attacks in 2016, and continued today, during the current pandemic context. More specifically, we will look at the signifier "victim", including all that it involves as questions about the subject. Our proposal will be to consider the victim status as a crossing. During this one, it is important that the suffering of the subjects is listened to, recognised, judged and compensated. In order for this to happen, everyone can find his own way of giving an answer to the reality of the virus, as it has imposed itself on us; but we will also see that one of the possible conclusions of this crossing consists in going through various forms of sublimation.