In Part II of our follow-up to the special series on COVID-19 (read Part I here), we hear from two more of our original contributors in response to the question, six months later, where are we now?

 

 

By Blair Casdin, LCSW, author of An Elegy for My Office From a Psychoanalyst Working Remotely

When I wrote “An Elegy for My Office” back in March, I was in a state of grief and shock, and had no idea when I’d return to my office or my old life. Since then, my attachment to my office has changed a number of times. Even the concept of an office, and what is needed for analysis to happen, has altered. When the city started to shut down, I left to stay with family in rural Massachusetts. Unmoored and tense, I adjusted to video sessions but I missed the special space of my office and the work my clients and I could do there. Instead, I was sharing a home with three dogs, five teenagers, and three other adults. Privacy, quiet, and WiFi were all hard to come by. I was happy when I returned to New York City in mid-June, back to city life, my own home, and my office. I made the daily commute to the west village throughout the summer. After I rearranged the furniture for the best camera angle and light, I was back to talking with clients, watering my plant, vacuuming and dusting—in all these ways trying to resume some “normalcy.” Even my clients were happy to see me in the office that they were familiar with. Yet the building was, and is, a ghost town. 

In early September, I no longer wanted to travel downtown, and my office felt desolate and less necessary. So I rescued the plant, grabbed some books, and joined the rest of the world working from home. The grief and longing I once had for the office has gone away, or maybe just underground. I sleep in, walk my dog three times a day, enjoy the extra time without the commute, grab lunch from the fridge, and dream of a new future office. That one will be close to home, not in my home. I just may have to bring my dog Ruby along, who’s become quite used to having me around, now a familiar presence in the room. Is an office even necessary anymore? I still think so, but for now we are held and contained by technology. I see and hear my clients in a much more intimate way now. I don’t know what the future holds, but every day I am becoming more comfortable with uncertainty.

 

Blair Casdin, LCSW, is a graduate of the Manhattan Institute for Psychoanalysis. At MIP, she is founder and former co-editor of the Analysis Now blog, co-chair of the Colloquium Committee, and teaches Ethics in Psychoanalysis and Dreams I. Blair is faculty and supervisor at the Institute for Expressive Analysis where she teaches Basic Clinical Concepts. She is in private practice in New York City.

 

 

By Veronica Csillag, LCSW, author of Psychoanalysis in the Time of Plague: This *Is* Psychoanalysis!

March was surreal and disorienting. April and May were scary. With the longer and warmer days of summer came some relief but not nearly enough. Wearing a light dress and sandals, it was just so much easier to disinfect as one would come and go. I would get out to the water’s edge as often as I could, whether it be a stroll by the Hudson, near my home, or a trip to a lake or the ocean. I wanted to soak up all the sun I could and have the cool waves bring relief to my burning skin and disturbed mind.

But now fall is upon us, this bizarre academic year has begun, for me with a bang. The days are noticeably shorter and colder. I can still walk by the river but there aren’t going to be any more beach days this year. I am grateful that I can continue to work. I am grateful to my patients, my students, my supervisees: they help me hold onto the remnants of my sanity. But I am sick and tired of the room that has become my office, however carefully furnished and comfortable it is, and of the chair I have been sitting on for the past six months. I am sick and tired of my devices and the electronic platforms that seem to constitute my life.

Most troublingly though I dread the coming season. I dread the days when we will have to wear layers of clothes to leave the house and carefully peel them off when we return. Wash hands, clean the doorknob. Are surfaces still considered contagious? How contagious? Does anyone know? I dread November, I dread the elections, I dread the civil war-like antagonism in the country. I dread the amount of hostility I will be inevitably absorbing—as I already have—from friends and colleagues, even family. Everyone has a different opinion about everything—and I do not even talk to the other side—and under the enormous pressure of daily survival, we all hold on to our beliefs with ferocious tenacity. A couple of degrees of separation generates fury like a woman scorned.

Rosh Hashanah brought me a few New Year’s greetings. One came from an esteemed psychoanalyst. It said: “From one atheist to another, wishes for a much better year ahead. Hard to be worse short of nuclear war.” So from one atheist among the many, let’s pray for that: No nuclear winter. Sorry folks that I am not able to muster more cheer. Perhaps next year.

 

Veronica Csillag, LCSW, is co-director, faculty, training and supervising analyst, Manhattan Institute for Psychoanalysis; former faculty, NYU School of Social Work. She is the author of several psychoanalytic papers, which were published in a variety of journals, The American Journal of Psychoanalysis, Psychoanalytic Dialogues, and The Psychoanalytic Quarterly among them. She is in private practice in New York City.

 

 

 

If you enjoyed this post, we recommend:
Making Sense of the Impossible: a trauma story, part I and part II by Blair Casdin, LCSW
Spotlight on the Co-Directors: Veronica Csillag and Steve Kirschner by blog editors