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In their article “The Reality of Trauma; the Trauma of Reality” (Psychoanalytic Dialogues), Bakó and Zana focus, from a Bionian perspective, on the distressing experience of the COVID-19 pandemic, which “affected the whole of humanity” (p. 302). Starting from the impact of this particular collective trauma, the authors then expand their argument to look at the psychological effects of mass trauma for both individuals and the group. In doing this, they consider how the outer reality of the pandemic is co-constructed by each individual's inner reality as well as by the dynamics of the group. At the
beginning of their article, Bakó and Zana emphasize that, in the case of the COVID pandemic, we, as psychologists, or sociologists, or human beings, are not just observers in the process but also participants. In highlighting this important point, they echo Jung's words when he said that, in any empirical observation, we must consider that we are, always and inevitably, participants in the process. In fact:
To the man of the twentieth century this is a matter of the highest importance and the very foundation of his reality, because he has recognized once and for all that without an observer there is no world and consequently no truth, for there would be nobody to register it…. Significantly enough, the most unpsychological of all sciences, physics, comes up against the observer at the decisive point. (Jung, 1952, para. 465)
The authors then address another aspect when reflecting on the data collected during the pandemic; that is, the effect of the daily news about the progression of the infection and the general mood of the population on the the personal experience of analysts, thus also affecting their work. As individuals, even more than analysts, we, too, had to cope with the reality of trauma, which impacted ours and our patients' lives, and we possibly found ourselves vulnerable when forced to quickly adjust our analytic setting to the safety requirements imposed by