Hard times those we are experiencing. Times of unidentified fears, but above all of withdrawal from life. AND' psychic inertia the greatest danger, even more than that of physical death. But returning to life is possible, we can do it at any moment. After all, "the real fear of being infected comes from the will to live". We talk about it with the psychoanalyst Sarantis Thanopulos.
The covid-19 virus: what it really is for our psyche
Sarantis what is coronavirus for the individual's mind? “On a conscious level it is a real danger to our physical health. As long as it persists, it has very important psychic consequences. It makes our representation of reality (internal and external) and our relationship with the world uncertain, precarious. I think that a great difficulty we have at the moment - starting with who is dealing with the health crisis - trying to find a solution, it is the lack of a global view. Because of the technical difficulties but also due to the anxiety and emotional pressure in which we find ourselves ".
“It is not clear, to give an example, because there have not yet been swabs on a large and statistically valid sample of the population. In their absence it is difficult to have a clear idea of the spread and aggressiveness of the virus, and one remains prisoner of the most devastating cases. The lethality rate could also change significantly if we had a better idea the number of those actually infected. And not just the most serious situations. Although an adequate screening would require an organizational effort rather than economic, not prohibitive, given the stakes. I think what we are witnessing is a worrying disorientation on the management of the crisis entrusted to a necessary quarantine, but I fear approximate in its approach ”.
Affective inertia and the conscious fear that is part of love
"The conscious fear of the virus is healthy, it is part of the love for life and its beauty with all the pain and unhappiness that there is in it " - continues Thanopulos. “However, like all conscious fears that have a recognizable object and a real foundation, it reactivates unconscious fears. They are rooted in our childhood and if unresolved they can take over. The fear of contagion recalls the fear of erotic involvement, emotional and mental with each other. The fear (sometimes terror) of being involved or involved, linked to the wounds that our passions have caused (or we thought they caused) to others or to the wounds we have suffered, in the early stages of our life. It must be said that the unconscious symbolic link between contagion and involvement present in the internal world, it is widespread in our xenophobic society, which fears migration as if it were infections ”.
Inertia is living in a permanent present
"The isolated individual lives in a permanent present, he has forgotten yesterday and does not worry about tomorrow". “Let's think a little about what happens with the campaign in defense of the quarantine. To all the importance given to remote communication which is not presented as a temporary necessity, but as normality. So, not as a substitutebut rather as an equivalent of close communication, of living contact. All this is justified by the fact that more and more virtual relationships have become in our life antagonists of reality. We live more and more isolated from each other, without realizing it, we live in the global network of large spaces and large numbers. Without the necessary mediation of small meeting spaces, which I like to call "Conversation spaces". The places that make our contacts personal suitable for the mutual fertilization of feelings and thoughts ".
"One can speak of a multitude of non-communicating monads where loneliness becomes desolation. The depressive effect generated by this situation, discouraging the sedimentation of emotions and ideas, leads to antidepressant behaviors. It leads to impulsive reactions that seek the discharge of their emotions or arousal. It pushes us to say that we are present in the impersonal platforms of communication with the first emotion or the first idea that comes to mind. Select elementary reactions within us, homologators who live in the here and now of the impulse from which they were born. The past (the sedimentation of the previous gaze that gives meaning and depth to the lived experience) and the future (looking at life with the wonder, intuitive and restless, of which a "lived" gaze is capable when it is able to look at things as if seeing them for the first time) they are cut off".
The psychic quarantine that is not mentioned
“There is a creeping, silent, contagious psychic quarantine, one fear of true contact with others, of the profound exchange with them ”- explains Thanopulos. “It is covered by various ideological justifications or simply become a habit, a living in distraction towards us and life. Today this quarantine receives a great reinforcement from the physical quarantine and an important legitimation. I was very impressed by the government's repeated call to temporarily abandon our habits. As if real living, real contact between people and their feelings, meeting, shaking hands, making love, traveling, were “habits”. And not indispensable manifestations of our life. Speaking of habits, we speak of behaviors. And since nothing is more manipulable than behavior si risks being trapped in the logic of the emergency: of the suspension of real relationships ".
Inertia, withdrawal from life and how to get back to life
When you withdraw from life, how can you return to life? “The psychic 'virus' itself is the defense against the involvement that invades our internal world. Thus preventing the movement of desires, feelings and thoughts spreading inertia. Then the real enemy is inertia, the psychic contraction created by the avoidance of meaningful, not superficial relationships. Inertia can cause in the most vulnerable and deprived people an identification with death (with devastating effects of destruction of oneself and others). But in the great majority of us it has un compressing effect which creates a sense of death and anguish against which the life that remains at stake within us rebels ”.
"If the rebellion manages to take the right path, transforming emptiness into a sense of loss, of lack, on the one hand we rediscover the value of what we have neglected and, on the other, we try to find it again. Let's go back to life. But this requires the reconstruction of spaces of conviviality, without which the sense of lack finds no shores ".
The deep relationship with the world
What does it mean that "a profound social crisis and an equally profound degradation of our relationship with the world have created a sense of strong psychic destabilization"? “A psychically healthy life requires in the first place the possibility of settling and processing our emotions and our thoughts. Of let them go deep to acquire fruitfulness and farsightedness. This implies a constant work of mourning our certainties, of the abandonment of the claim that everything happens according to our expectations. The difference between us and reality, between us and others, is the source of our creativity. This requires constant repositioning that allows us to transform and renew our understanding with life. Without transformation we die ”.
“It is clear that if our living conditions become too unpredictable, and our space of movement shrinks, any transformation becomes a danger. And we live in a state of psychic destabilization experienced as unmanageable, we feel powerless. It must be remembered that we mistakenly take it for granted that human beings are primarily concerned with their physical survival. In fact, his primary concern is psychic survival, the possibility of making sense of its existence. When he fails, he resorts to completely unreasonable representations that give him a momentary escape from what is happening to him, at the cost of dying. The problem I would like to ask is this. What is at this moment the demarcation between the battle against a real danger that comes from our will to live and the defense from our sense of helplessness? ”.
Coronavirus is our real fear
Ultimately… in the “Coronavirus” framework… What is our real fear? “There is the real fear that comes from the will to live (for which we must all be in solidarity). And the equally real fear that comes from being in a world he lost in a dangerous way an important part of the sense of reality. And which therefore leads us to live not to enjoy life, but to live in order not to die. The first is looming and all in all, it will lead to painful losses, but we will be able to contain it. The second is more important because it warns us that our future is at stake ”.
# Italian in the heart
