Testimonies during the pandemic: Psychoanalytic reflections on trauma, state, economy and death

Abstract

This study aims to reflect on subject’s experience in the face of the covid-19 pandemic from a psychoanalytic perspective. The material discursively analyzed was constituted by testimonies of undergraduate psychology students published in a website during the period of social distancing. The subjectivation processes emphasized in our analysis were discussed in four thematic groups: facing the traumatic potential: being able to witness the fall of the Other; the (un)protection of the subjects by the State: the potentiation of psychological suffering; the superegoic imperative of capitalist production and the productive traces of unproductivity; and (im)possibilities of mourning: changes in our attitude towards death. Finally, we seek to critically evidence the destructive and authoritarian aspect of the state management of affections on subjects and the transformative power (analytical and political) of the experiences of unproductivity, indeterminacy, and helplessness.