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COVID‐19, precarity and loneliness
Author(s) -
Schwartz Susan
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
journal of analytical psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.285
H-Index - 23
eISSN - 1468-5922
pISSN - 0021-8774
DOI - 10.1111/1468-5922.12673
Subject(s) - precarity , loneliness , covid-19 , psychoanalysis , isolation (microbiology) , psychology , pandemic , social isolation , prejudice (legal term) , sociology , social psychology , psychotherapist , gender studies , medicine , virology , biology , disease , microbiology and biotechnology , pathology , outbreak , infectious disease (medical specialty)
In this paper I discuss Jungian psychological work of the trauma and loss experienced in reaction to COVID‐19 with a man who represents a clinical composite. The issues of precarity, a concept used by the philosopher Judith Butler, are combined with the notions of lack and absence of French psychoanalyst André Green. The psychological and societal situation of precarity aroused the man’s childhood issues that were long repressed. The loneliness, isolation and death from COVID‐19 mirrored his personal and the collective responses to the disaster from this global pandemic. He felt on the edge of collapse as what he knew of his world crashed and he found himself unable to cope. The subsequent Jungian work taking place through the virtual computer screen was taxing and restorative simultaneously for both analyst and analysand.