Main description:

Showcasing a diverse range of contributions from psychoanalysts of many different countries and theoretical orientations, Psychoanalysis and Covidian Life, a collective work edited by Howard B. Levine and Ana de Staal, offers readers the opportunity to explore and reflect upon the ways in which the Covid-19 pandemic has begun to influence analytical practice. From the changes imposed on the framework (online sessions) to the impact of the trauma of isolation and the disruption of our social anchoring (required by confinement and health protection gestures), to the challenge presented to the 'ordinary' denial of mortality, this book explores the lessons of what the pandemic can teach us about how to understand and treat collective distress individually and puts psychoanalytical tools to the test of the profound psychosocial upheavals that the twenty-first century may hold in store.

This book will be of interest to practising and trainee clinicians and anyone with an interest in the all-consuming effects of a global pandemic.

Contributions from Christopher Bollas, Patricia Cardoso de Mello, Bernard Chervet, Joshua Durban, Antonino Ferro, Serge Frisch, Steven Jaron, Daniel Kupermann, Howard Levine, Francois Levy, Riccardo Lombardi, Elias & Alberto Rocha Barros, Michael Rustin, Ana de Staal, and Jean-Jacques Tyszler.

Contents:

Acknowledgements

About the editors and contributors

Editors' note

Part I

The background scene/the context

1. Civilization and the discontented

2. The coronavirus pandemic and its meanings

Part II

Living and thinking in pandemic times

3. The shattering of a denial as food for thought

4. Landscapes of mental life under Covid-19

5. Catastrophe and its vicissitudes: denial and the vitalising effect of "good air"

Part III

The setting under pressure

6. Being online: what does it mean for psychoanalysis?

7. The burnt compartment. Or: Psychoanalysis without a couch

8. Individual distress, institutional distress

Part IV

Reconfigurations and changes in practice

9. Body and soul in remote analysis: anguished countertransference, pandemic panic, and space-time limits

10. A short circuit in the analytical process

11. Beyond the all-traumatic: narrative imagination and new temporalities in the analytic session

Part V

Clinical journals

12. Katabasis, anabasis: working in a post-ICU Covid-19 unit in a public hospital

13. Where does the psychoanalyst live? The online setting in the psychoanalysis of a three-year-old girl on the autistic spectrum

14. Where does the Covid live? Osmotic/diffuse anxieties, isolation, and containment in times of the plague

Part VI

Conclusion

15. Covidian life

Index