Psychoanalysis and Covidian Life: Common Distress, Individual Experience

Showcasing a diverse range of contributions from psychoanalysts of many different countries and theoretical orientations, Psychoanalysis and Covidian Life, a collective work edited by Howard B. Levine and Ana de Staal, offers readers the opportunity to explore and reflect upon the ways in which the Covid-19 pandemic has begun to influence analytical practice. From the changes imposed on the framework (online sessions) to the impact of the trauma of isolation and the disruption of our social anchoring (required by confinement and health protection gestures), to the challenge presented to the 'ordinary' denial of mortality, this book explores the lessons of what the pandemic can teach us about how to understand and treat collective distress individually and puts psychoanalytical tools to the test of the profound psychosocial upheavals that the twenty-first century may hold in store. This book will be of interest to practising and trainee clinicians and anyone with an interest in the all-consuming effects of a global pandemic. Contributions from Christopher Bollas, Patricia Cardoso de Mello, Bernard Chervet, Joshua Durban, Antonino Ferro, Serge Frisch, Steven Jaron, Daniel Kupermann, Howard Levine, Francois Levy, Riccardo Lombardi, Elias & Alberto Rocha Barros, Michael Rustin, Ana de Staal, and Jean-Jacques Tyszler.

Howard B. Levine is a member of APSA, PINE, the Contemporary Freudian Society, on the faculty of the NYU Post-Doc Contemporary Freudian track, on the editorial board of the International Journal of Psychoanalysis and Psychoanalytic Inquiry, editor-in-chief of the Routledge Wilfred Bion Studies Book Series, and in private practice in Brookline, Massachusetts. He has authored many articles, book chapters, and reviews on psychoanalytic process and technique and the treatment of primitive personality disorders. His co-edited books include Unrepresented States and the Construction of Meaning (Karnac, 2013); On Freud's Screen Memories (Karnac, 2014); The Wilfred Bion Tradition (Karnac 2016); Bion in Brazil (Karnac, 2017), and Andre Green Revisited: Representation and the Work of the Negative (Karnac, 2018). He is the author of Transformations de l'Irreprésentable (Ithaque, 2019) and the forthcoming Between the Silence and the Cry (Routledge).

Ana de Staal is a Franco-Brazilian psychoanalyst, member of the Freudian Psychoanalysis Society (SPF) and psychosomatist. Former Editor-in-Chief of Revue Chimères, founded by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, she now runs Éditions d'Ithaque in France. She has translated and published the French editions of most of W. R. Bion's seminars, as well as the works of important authors of contemporary psychoanalysis, such as Thomas Ogden, Antonino Ferro, Christopher Bollas, Martin Bergmann and André Green. She works in private practice in Paris.