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These comments center on two phrases repeated in Chalker's paper. One is the poignant question "Can I get a witness?" The other phrase claims that difference alters understanding. Current relational literature on collective trauma and witnessing is reviewed, addressing Chalker's question and clinical case. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The IARPP Symposium papers offer us a panoramic view of the range of clinical creativity and critical thought inspired within the relational community in the midst of the severe challenges of the pandemic. The contributions range from examples of thoughtful clinical engagement, to ethical considerations, the importance of non-verbal communication, the impact of racial issues on both patient and analyst and the intersection between relational thinking and socio/political issues. The papers illustrate a clinical approach that does not emphasize uncovering truth or resolving conflict but rather encourages enduring the complexity of human experience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Shlomit's Yadlin-Gadot's paper, "The Carnivalesque Politics of a Pandemic Body," carries us into a bit of a wild, carnival-like experience: a dazzling array of images, disguises, and visual metaphors delivered with a powerful immediacy. I will stay as close as I can to what Yadlin-Gadot has presented, while at the same time trying to translate her brilliant conceptual array of terms about Covid-19, carnival and trans-subjectivity in a way that may help us define them while touching on the big questions she poses in her dual ending: What can relational thought offer in times of Covid-19, and what can Covid-19 offer relational thought in terms of a challenge? Or, where does the carnivalesque take us in terms of theory, and where does theory take us in terms of the carnivalesque? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Covid-19 has affected our lives in innumerable and formerly unimaginable ways. Among its effects is the threat to our identity in terms of broken bodily boundaries, severed social contacts, and a blurring of our group belongings. A response to this mingled physio-social threat has been an unprecedented surge of trans-subjectivity, as a form of intersubjectivity that is both elevated and reduced. In this paper, this phenomenon is explored in its carnivalesque manifestation, expressing itself as both a revolt against state control and an effort to re-appropriate a sense of bodily self and other. I illustrate these ideas with theoretical, visual and clinical materials. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a time as stressful and uncertain as a pandemic, individuals struggle to weigh the risk vs. benefit ratio as they attempt to pursue at least some of their customary life satisfactions while keeping themselves and others safe. What modifications in our usual psychoanalytic approach–if any–are called for in working with patients grappling with those decisions? What kind of influence are we exerting, consciously or unconsciously, over their views and actions during these times? How do psychoanalysts' own unrecognized needs, wishes, and anxieties affect their responsivity to their patients? This paper takes up these questions and others as part of an exploration of the ethical dimension of psychoanalytic care. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The COVID-19 pandemic forced therapists and patients to physically separate and conduct sessions from afar. This created particular challenges for child and adolescent work, which tends to center around movement and embodiment. As therapists navigated the constraints of their new reality, early skepticism quickly gave way to creative, on-the-spot solutions. Born out of necessity, therapist's flexibility and accommodations brought about changes to the analytic frame that were unprecedented in scope. Common themes include the therapist's loss of control over the structure of psychotherapy, a renegotiation of therapist and patient roles, placing the parent at the center of treatment, findings new ways to play, and virtual treatment as a new mechanism for modulating closeness and intimacy in the therapeutic dyad. Rooted in clinical vignettes of clinicians from the early weeks of the pandemic, this paper will illustrate these themes and consider their implications for the future of psychotherapy with children and adolescents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Global Perspectives, we bring you interviews with psychoanalysts from around the world in an effort to explore the influence of culture on training, theory development, and adherence to clinical technique and psychoanalytic practice in general. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author suggests that we use the lens of acknowledging harm to approach the political events of the pandemic, the revelation of the depth of racial inequity and injustice, as well as the neoliberal capitalism that holds oppression in place, contributing to the emiseration of the precariat. Beginning with the idea of knowing terrible things, she considers the inability of members of the liberal elite to actually name, know and confront the harm being done. The contradictory position of implicated subjects benefiting from systems of domination while nominally opposing their injustice is considered in light of the dissociative effort to protect the sense of goodness despite knowing otherwise. This self-protection is related to the imaginary construct Only One Can Live which the author elaborates as an aspect of the position of "doer and done to." By contrast to that complementary opposition, she suggests the position of the moral Third in which we can acknowledge and repair harm; we can truly know what has been done wrong and take responsibility for putting it right. As opposed to clinging to the sense of goodness, the collective efforts on behalf of repairing harm allow us to contain knowing and bear the sense of badness; as co-created action they embody an intersubjective relation to the moral Third. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The disaster of the COVID-19 pandemic abruptly forced nearly the entire psychoanalytic community to move treatment, supervision, and classes online, leaving many feeling uncentered, unprepared, and vulnerable. The authors, members of the APsaA COVID-19 Advisory Team and longtime researchers in screen relations-based psychoanalytic care, recount lessons learned from their pandemic experience. As both disaster victim and mental health responder, they start with the cultural context for pandemic-specific mental health practice. Going deeper into the technological context for psychoanalytic care, they describe clinically-relevant differences between screen relations and physical co-presence, highlighting risk and trust, richness, and relational embodiment as key influences on clinical process and outcome. Common adaptions and responses that helped make pandemic-specific screen relations-based treatment work emerged from their own work and discussions and consultations with numerous colleagues. Curiosity, humility, clinical creativity, and self-care are highlighted. They close with hopes for a post-pandemic world in which we can mourn loss, reestablish trust, and renew and deepen our appreciation for relationships and intimacies only possible when we are bodies together in the same place at the same time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]