Zwei Jahre COVID-19-Pandemie. Das Unheimliche, Abwehr und der Einbruch des analytischen Rahmens

After 2 years of the pandemic the author examines some results from the psychoanalytical literature, in which the threat due to the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) was investigated and the challenges for the analytical dyad were discussed. The first part deals with the uncanny, which some authors ascribed to severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus type 2 (SARS-CoV-2), the causative agent of COVID-19. It centers on the question whether this is inherent to the virus, which according to Freudʼs dialectic understanding of uncanny, is something endemic, old familiar. In the second part the author discusses some individual and collective defense movements against the uncanny of the virus, including social politically highly bizarre and dangerous group formations, such as the QAnon movement. The main focus of this article is the critical question discussed in the third part, whether in view of the radical changes in the analytical framework (telephone, video), the analytical work can succeed (at all) without physical encounter of the analytical dyad. Based on a case study the author investigates the technical challenges of treatment, to consider and to interpret the movement of transference due to the altered framework and points out the danger of losing the “inner framework” (Bleger 1993).