“Our very specific analytic listening can be used to understand how this external terrible situation is reactivating their internal anxieties and for that we try to confine the suffering to the here and now of the phone call.”

 

Description: Harvey Schwartz welcomes Dr. Ana Catarina Duarte Silva to this episode. Dr. Duarte Silva is a psychoanalyst and a full member of the Portuguese Psychoanalytic Society and of the IPA. She is also past secretary of the Portuguese Institute of Psychoanalysis, where she gives seminars especially in the work of Winnicott. Dr. Duarte Silva also published in the journal of the Portuguese Psychoanalytic Society where she is chair of the working team. She lives in Lisbon, where she has a private practice since 1995.

 

In this conversation, you will hear about how countertransference is often limited by the pressing reality that we are all working under. In contrast, Dr. Duarte Silva shares a very rich case example where the patient having ‘no body’ in the office reverberates with his recognizing his childhood experience of feeling like a ‘nobody.’

 

Key takeaways:

[4:08] Dr. Duarte Silva talks about how Portugal is encountering this crisis.

[6:58] Dr. Duarte Silva shares the current state of the analytic community in Lisbon.

[8:50] In Portugal there is an open telephone line for people to call when they need to talk to an analyst.

[9:25] The relation between social isolation, loneliness, and fear.

[11:50] Dr. Duarte Silva talks about the transition from in-person to online sessions.

[15:25] The matter of soft community denial.

[17:20] Hypochondria

[17;52] Fear of loss and helplessness.

[18:15] The lack of the body and its interference in the analytic process via online.

[21:25] Dr. Duarte Silva shares clinical material.

[26:56] What keeps Dr. Duarte Silva going through these uncertain times?

 

Mentioned in this episode:

IPA Off the Couch www.ipaoffthecouch.org

 

Recommended Readings:

The Possibility of an Island, Michel Houellebecq