This special issue of Psychoanalytic Psychologyopens in new window addresses the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on psychoanalytic practice. Guest editors Steve Ellman and Neal Vorus discuss key takeaways.
What is the special issue about?
The special issue is about the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on psychoanalytic practice, drawing on the experiences of working analysts as they struggle to adjust to and understand changes in their working lives over the past year. For this issue we invited 20 different analysts from the United States, Latin America, and Europe to contribute brief articles on the pandemic. Our aim was not to arrive at general conclusions but to collate informal impressions, anecdotes, and reflections from this very difficult period. The special issue concludes with an integrative discussion that distills implications for potential changes in psychoanalytic theory and practice arising from collective experiences during the pandemic.
What is the significance of the issue?
It would be difficult to overstate the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on every aspect of life, including the ongoing work of psychoanalysts as they endeavor to help their patients under conditions of profound duress and disorienting change. Not since WWII have psychoanalysts and psychotherapists worked with their patients under similar conditions of shared danger, which seems to have introduced a new kind of intimacy into the way many analysts practice. And never before have analysts practiced remotely with all of their patients, or for such an extended period of time. It is important to assess the effect of these changes on psychoanalytic practice and understanding of the personal growth processes that occur during psychoanalytic treatment.
Tell us a few key takeaways.
Most of the papers in the special issue reflect on two fundamental changes in psychoanalytic treatment over the past year: the necessity for remote therapy by telephone or videoconference, and the fact that analysts are living through a shared traumatic experience alongside their patients. The authors describe therapeutic benefits and drawbacks resulting from these conditions.
Contributors describe changes in the treatment process resulting from more intimate sessions, as both patient and analyst attend remotely from their respective homes, often with personal effects present and sometimes guest appearances by family members. Important questions are raised about the therapeutic effects of this more personal mode of engagement.
Several contributors reflect on the challenges of working with a mixture of traumatic factors involving the ever-present danger of the pandemic, the repeated experience of police killing people of color and resulting social unrest, and anxiety related to the potential breakdown of democracy during the 2020 U.S. presidential campaign. Each of these factors potentially reverberates with past traumatic experiences for many patients (and analysts). These factors present significant challenges to the traditional psychoanalytic stance involving anonymity and abstinence, as more personal modes of engagement around these issues are often needed.
A number of other topics are covered in this collection. One paper offers a terrifying account from an Italian analyst who was hospitalized and nearly died of COVID-19. Another, written by a historian of psychoanalysis, revisits the 1918 flu epidemic and its impact on the early development of psychoanalysis in light of current circumstances. A paper coauthored by an analyst who volunteered in an emergency room during the height of the pandemic offers theoretical reflections on anxieties related to respiration. The sociology of mask-wearing and psychological reflections on government responses to the pandemic in Europe and America are also addressed.
What are some practical implications of the articles featured in the issue?
Collectively, the papers in this special issue all point to the importance of taking stock of the impact of changed ways of working necessitated by the COVID-19 pandemic. Some altered approaches to therapy may provide lasting benefit—for example, the expanded availability of psychoanalytic treatment to underserved areas through remote sessions. It is possible that some of the more personal modes of engagement, born of necessity, will lead to beneficial changes in the evolving understanding of the therapeutic action of psychoanalysis. It is equally important to attend to the impact of the disruption or loss of some important features of our work, such as the loss of the in-person connection and the changed boundaries of the treatment setting. It is important to sift through both sides of these changes as we begin to emerge from COVID-19.
This article is in the Clinical Psychology topic area. View more articles in the Clinical Psychology topic area.