“Oh… and this is my dog. And you see there, that corner – that’s what I’m talking about… that’s where I was dragged when I clung to my mother, trying to stop her from leaving the house…”

-J, female, 24 years old

 

As I adjust the screen, gaze into the camera, and ensure the window behind me doesn’t shadow my face, I’m reminded of the lamp that lit just perfect, the couch kept at just the right angle, the chair – a masterpiece of comfort. I’m reminded of the space we both once inhabited: the clinic. I have barely a minute to mourn and yearn before the screen opens into a beautiful, cozy home, a home I am new to but not unfamiliar with. That home, once the setting of my patient’s narrative, is now the other half of the clinic.

Not even in fantasy have I imagined entering this patient’s house. Perhaps the house has always been welcomed into the clinic where it could be felt, denied, or co-created, but to be thrown into the setting, into the action of the narrative, is to become a part of the story. How do we know if our analytic understanding is oriented for that? What do we do to the value of imagination and unconscious communication when every detail is now a demonstrated reality? How do we go back from here?

In the midst of grappling with these questions, my attention is captured by the pale face on the screen, too close for comfort, trying its best to ensure continuity in these broken, collapsing times. Some patients are enlivened by the possibility of showing me their space, this withheld part of their lives, of which they perhaps assume we both share the same memories; while others feel uncomfortable and helpless about opening their doors to me and bringing to my sight what they don’t wish to see. I wonder if they too wonder, how do we go back from here?

Perhaps this is the canvas of psychoanalysis now, which is no more a well-stretched, blank, single slate; it is a colorful, life-size page with scribbles of the other, wrinkles of space and stains of minute distractions. We are now, more than ever, on the cusp of being and becoming, where theory has to be reinvoked, processes have to be redefined, and clinic has to be reimagined. Along with the ability to attend to our patients’ psychic ruptures around the unfathomable reality of the pandemic and join them in their fears and fantasies in genuine, non-traditional analytic ways, it is equally essential that therapy doesn’t dissolve its purpose and we don’t end up merely acting like friends. Perhaps the therapist’s desperation to retain the therapeutic alliance and fear of watching the familiar structure of treatments dismantle is very real. We find ourselves in the very conflict that Frosh (2008) terms “the domestication of ideas” (p. 107), wherein psychoanalysis ceases to behold the difficult questions and qualms. Through the “blunting of the subversive edge of psychoanalysis” (Parker, 2008, p. 185), we are lured to cradle the patient into a comforting cushion amidst a discomforting reality, and its value is undeniable. However, leaving the story there would feel incomplete.

Even during these difficult times, the patient touching a sense of isolation, or feeling devoid of love, or wanting the therapist to see their broken teacup is not just a response to the external reality. It is as much a communication, if not a representation, of the internal prolonged state that one is having to be in “lockdown” with. Bearing witness to our patients’ homes, their interiors, is an intimate encounter that the patient is aware of as much as the analyst. It is a conscious choice, for the most part, to reveal certain parts and conceal others: what one wears, where one sits, and the like are surely matters of context and privilege, but to deny their psychic foundation is to deny the patient the couch. It is for the therapist to recognize and decipher this code – not only for oneself, but also for the patient. Perhaps holding the realistic fears of/for the larger world and communicating with the patient’s internal corresponding self is the current work of psychoanalysis.

So here’s to my fellow analysts, visual listeners and flag-bearers of psychic continuity in perforated times. Our work has transitioned into something we’ll only be able to gather, process, and write about retrospectively. Until then, the hope is to survive – our patients’ felt experiences, the dyadic needs and theoretical foundations – within the field and within ourselves. If all goes well, one day we’ll look back on this time as a moment in history wherein we all played our small part in reinscribing the process of therapy. And if nothing goes well… well, we’ll still be here, doing the same thing, because we honestly don’t know how we would go back from here.

 

Aanchal Bhatnagar is a psychoanalytic psychotherapist in training in New Delhi, India. She is affiliated with the American Psychological Association, and the recipient of the APA Div. 39 Scholar Award 2019. Her current work includes archiving the narratives of “ordinary” losses and psychic continuity.  

 

References

Frosh, S. (2010) Psychoanalysis outside the clinic: Interventions in psychosocial studies. London: Palgrave.

Parker, I. (2008) Temptations of pedagogy: Seventeen lures. Subjectivity, 24, 376–379.

 

To contribute to the special series on COVID-19, send blog posts of up to ~1,000 words (read full submission guidelines here) to Analysis Now blog co-editors Justine Duhr at justinetduhr@gmail.com and Robert Levin at rob@robertlevinlcsw.com.

 

 

 

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