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Had psychoanalysis not rediscovered the body in the past quarter century, it would have been forced to start afresh and begin to grapple with its contours in new ways during the time of the pandemic. Recent attention to the body-mind with its unique rhythms, discomforts, sensations, and carriage provide au courant scaffolding for the analyst to heed its potential messages from the unconscious and to deliberate on them in sessions. One can enter this newer territory assured that one had not wandered too far afield from traditional grounding in theory and practice.
Within weeks of stay-at-home orders and a frenzy of activity to establish virtual work from home, waves of acute fatigue set in. Patients complained of exhaustion and irritability. Each had taken reasonable steps toward self-care and most were among the fortunate ones who could earn a living and rely on loved ones for support. Why so prickly, insecure, and reactive to infractions such as a dropped conference call or request from a boss or colleague to do just one more thing? Tendencies toward self-recrimination worked through months or years before now blossomed anew. They manifested themselves not only in guilt- and shame-filled verbiage but in long, epic dream narrations and subtle physical symptoms. Some days it took the full force of the analytic carapace not to shut down my computer, toss the keypad gauntlet, and helplessly shrug off these complaints, beleaguered as I, the analyst, was with similar strictures and annoyances.