Catastrophe, mourning and hope: Psychoanalytic work during the COVID-19 pandemic

Abstract

This article discusses the challenges and the possibilities of psychoanalytic work in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. We begin by defining catastrophe and establishing its relation to the concept of trauma. Next, we discuss the transition from pain to suffering and its correlation to different traumatic outcomes. After that, we approach the demands of psychoanalytic work in the current pandemic context by emphasizing the psychoanalyst’s double mourning labor: one related to the shift of the presential setting to the online setting and the other one related to the pandemic. Last, to face this unprecedented clinical and cultural panorama, we suggest increasing the elasticity of our work.