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Archetypes of the pandemic
Author(s) -
Sacco German Betty
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 - 10.1111/1468-5922.12676
Subject(s) - depersonalization , psychology , pandemic , feeling , anxiety , psychoanalysis , archetype , derealization , meaning (existential) , covid-19 , social psychology , art , psychotherapist , emotional exhaustion , literature , clinical psychology , medicine , disease , pathology , infectious disease (medical specialty) , burnout , psychiatry
This paper attempts to read the psychological and emotional impact of the COVID‐19 pandemic through the archetypal images contained in patients’ dreams. In these dreams, symbols related to the power of nature and to extreme danger are paired with feelings of detachment that seem to point to a traumatic dissociation, due to the archetypal experience that erupts in familiar surroundings. Through the humanization of the ineffable experience, dissociation, which in the beginning of the pandemic showed in high levels of anxiety, panic attacks and depersonalization, can be transformed into the overview needed for the search for meaning. The container for this process of transformation is the analyst, the real, virtual or imagined one, and his or her ability to relate and feel.