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I write this as the Bobcat fires race through Angeles National Forest. My neighborhood is orange, a beautiful glow that seems to come from within, although I know it really comes from without. A patient of mine told me she read an article about birds falling from the sky. Another patient asked me how I was. I said, okay, how about you? And he looked out the window.
Psychoanalytic Inquiry tends to frame its concluding pages with an epilogue summarizing each author’s contribution to the subject at hand. That approach does not seem fitting for this issue. Our conversation took place over two months, during a crisis that not only grew but changed form. Few of us remained fixed in our thinking over this time, and our talk developed a life of its own distinct from each contribution. Events overtake me even as I write this epilogue. I let a week go by before going back to writing. The beautiful orange glow is gone. I am now four days after the disastrous Trump/Biden debate and a day after Trump’s Covid diagnosis. Biden is ahead 14 points in the polls. The word “schadenfreude” is trending. New York Times’ conservative columnist Ross Douthat speaks of the “falling action” of a tragedy. But we all know the wheel of fortune can spin another 180 degrees on the head of the next twitter post. If this were a play or movie, we would be in the unpredictable second act where everything seems to happen at once. Not the right time for hindsight. And yet that is the unfair task we have given ourselves: to reflect on earth-shattering events as they come at us in rapid succession. Rather than attempt to summarize the participants’ various contributions – an impossible task in this issue – I will content myself with pointing out the major themes that emerged, as I understand them in retrospect.
From the outset, the group split between those wanting to describe their personal experience of being in an apocalypse-like situation and those viewing such a project as a