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The phone connection reminds me of the crackling wires of a long-distance call circa the 1950s. Yet my patient is geographically near, at home as we all are, given shelter-in-place orders during the first weeks of the Coronavirus pandemic. Actually, at the moment, she is not at home, but walking in a local park, weaving in and out of reception. There is a new therapeutic frame in the time of the plague. No longer together in my office, protected and freed–at least in shared fantasy–from the constraints of reality (Boulanger, 2013), we are assailed by reality. Me at home. My patients at home or not. Weaving in and out of connection.
Sometimes they are perambulating through the city in search of less constricted personal space (the acuity of headset microphones pickup an array of sounds and conversations which produce a sometimes cacophonic background soundtrack of these troubled times). Patients exercise on treadmills or stationary bikes throughout our calls. Sometimes they are temporarily bubble-wrapped in parked cars (free from climbing-off-the-wall children and cabin-fevered partners). Though safety is truly precarious these days; one patient had an accident while parked and nearing the end of our session.
Given the ubiquity of video sessions, the therapeutic frame now broadens to contain home, and not just intrapsychic, interiors. Where imagination once sketched aspects of a patient’s life, the analyst has unfettered access into home decor, housekeeping, pets, and other household members. While some of this may add warmth or depth, there are often uncomfortable primal-scene views: bedrooms, photographs, and art collections (the genitalia of an intersexed figure face me during sessions with one patient). And, of course, there are revealing vistas into my personal space as well.
The altered shapes of the frame reflect the distorted shapes of present-day reality. The Coronavirus has upended what was once considered normal in ways perhaps only imaginable before as the c