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Making sense of experience is our pan-theoretical mission. What happens when we all become a bit unmoored and a few moments run into weeks and weeks? What happens to even the “best analyzed” when fears and anxieties prevail over disorder, chaos, and uncertainty.
In the United States, as well as, much of the rest of the world, that sanctity of psychotherapeutic space – the consultation room; that privately co-created dyadic world of patient and therapist, and that “specialness” of our co-configured ways of doing things together (Lyons-Ruth et al., 1998), vanished in March 2020 – in what felt like an instant. Elsewhere, other countries had differing time frames and gradations of interventions. Still, lockdowns, social distancing, remote learning, and telehealth have become part of the global pandemic lexicon.
This issue presents the work of talented and creative child and adolescent therapists. Their respective clinical processes demonstrate a disciplined, pan-theoretical engagement with their patients. The writer’s desire and intent to connect and “accompany” their patients during a time of crisis and chaos is palpable. Notably, the therapist’s work with Riku, Chloe, and Gemma elucidated a committed bidirectional stance, where a Systems understanding of the clinical relationship comes to the fore. In all the case material presented, a relentless application of bidirectional is reflective in the relationships between child and adolescent patients and their analysts. In each case, we “hear” and can observe the dyad’s “conspiring” and “compromising” to sustain their relationships in the face of disruptions from COVID-19, governmental restrictions, and technological limitations.
“Psychotherapy” – a safe, confidential time with one’s therapist, a privileged and almost luxurious process, became a demand of one more hour on the screen. For children and adolescents in treatment, in particular, already “on-screen” in school 2–6 h a day, while maintaining connections with friends