Letters from Lockdown

Kind regards,

I have been reading most of the emails I can from all countries, and it helps me to feel accompanied in difficult moments, as well as it helps me to think about and to elaborate upon an experience that perhaps is overcoming us and is totally new.

One of my greatest anguishes has been the lack of response from the president of my country and others in positions of power. It is outrageous. It is difficult to believe in health authorities, and in the face of this lack of reliability, I have to resort to the WHO website, talk to colleagues who are doctors, and listen to my own criteria.

This week, I still attended my consultation in the presence of all the measures of distance and hygiene, and I listened to the anxieties generated by the situation in each patient and those close to them. Some patients have already asked to stop because they cannot or do not feel comfortable with the use of Skype, and others wish to stop because their income is altered. This raised a question in my mind: Do we take a break in the treatment, or do I actively propose an alternative?

I opted to tell patients who are going to have a 50 percent cut in their salary to come to their appointments, and here we would figure out together what to do with the situation, offering to reduce the fee or payment within a few months or even for the sessions over the next four weeks. I have suggested that the patients might propose a plan we can agree to together.

Yesterday afternoon, a young patient entered the session, saying, “Things are very different.” She talked about the suspension of her work and not knowing if she would receive her salary as well as about her confinement in the house. I thought about the changes that there would be in the treatment, about the changes in her internal emotional state. I also thought that she surely found me changed as her analyst; I couldn't find a way to get past the manifest discourse through an interpretation because all her realistic concerns caught me c