The Pandemic, the Protests, the Chaos: A Destabilizing Effect on the Analyst: Analyst Involvement in Protests During the Pandemic and Its Effect on a Treatment

In May 2020, within the cultural and emotionally regressive chaos of the pandemic, the analyst witnessed a violent Black Lives Matter protest. Myriad unprocessed feelings subsequently impacted her handling the treatment of a patient who abruptly left a session to attend a protest herself. The analyst describes her own personal experience and the cascade of events that affected the treatment. She suggests that analysts can be armed with the awareness that enactments are more likely to happen when the analyst, as well the patient, are under extreme duress as is the case in the time of Covid. She describes some of the forces that were specific to this case and her own personal embroilment. She then broadens the discussion to other analysts’ reports of overwhelming pandemic experiences and the corresponding effect on the work. She also elucidates the importance of the frame for therapeutic work.