"I feel terribly isolated not seeing my patients face to face, not seeing them in my consulting room. Also, you know, the work with students in all these internet platforms is possible but it is pretty difficult."

Description: In times when we are all facing a crisis of unprecedented proportion, we are going change the focus of the podcast: we will now be interviewing psychoanalysts from all corners of the globe to discuss how their local communities are coping with this situation, how their clinical work has been affected by the situation, and how the internal worlds of both the analysts and the patients have been impacted by this virus as it touches both our real and imaginary fears. This is an opportunity to gain great wisdom, empathy, and hope.

 

Harvey Schwartz welcomes Wojtek Hanbowski, who is a training and child analyst at the Polish Psychoanalytical Society and the co-founder of the Hanna Segal Institute for Psychoanalytic Studies in Warszawa. Between 1993 and 1997, he worked at the Cassel Hospital in London and he had his analyst and his training in child analysis at the Institute for Psychoanalysis.

 

In today’s episode, Wojtek shares the struggles presented by the current situation dealing with the COVID 19, forcing sessions to be virtual, exposing a tension between the literal and the metaphoric, and the impact it has on analysts and on patients as well.

 

Key takeaways:

[3:55] Wojtek talks about the current situation in Eastern Europe regarding COVID 19.

[6:50] Wojtek shares how the psychoanalytic community in Poland is reacting to the pandemic.

[8:45] The British colleagues started remote analysis later than the rest of European countries.

[9:35] The feeling of isolation as an analyst who can’t receive patients in the consulting room.

[12:16] Wojtek shares clinical examples about how different fantasies operate in a new setting.

[16:22] Harvey analyses the tension between the literal and the metaphoric.

[17:36] It is the first time in human history where the scientists share openly the results of their researches.

 

Mentioned in this episode:

IPA Off the Couch www.ipaoffthecouch.org