Editorial introduction: Psychoanalytical perspectives on the COVID‐19 pandemic

Abstract

The COVID‐19 pandemic has changed our lives during the last year dramatically and in a totally unexpected way. For months now, we ve been constantly confronted with an elusive mortal threat. In some countries, the virus continues to spread at an alarming rate, for example in India, where (at this writing, May 2, 2021) more than 400,000 people are infected every day. In other countries, such as the United States, which has suffered the most deaths so far (over 568,000), thanks to vaccinations, which are now progressing well, the false sense of security that one can return to a prepandemic life is growing, creating new risks. For example, virologists warn vehemently of newly emerging mutations in populations that have not yet been vaccinated, for example in the Third World, which could then spread globally again and also reinfect those who have already been vaccinated. The difficult truth is that every person all over the world is only save to the degree that everyone in the whole globe is safe. Or, as the public health professionals say “until all of us are safe, none of us.” In countries like Brazil, where more than 320,000 people have now died, the misery has reached such proportions that a psychoanalytic society even decided to publish an Open Letter to the Population in April 2021. The Brazilian Federation of Psychoanalysis (FEBRAPSI) would like to publicly express its apprehension and perplexity in view of the epidemiological disaster due to the lack of control of COVID‐19. We are all in a situation of risk and helplessness, whether in the sense of catching the disease or becoming psychically ill, as a result of the frightening experience of seeing family, friends, and strangers succumbing to coronavirus infection. In this scenario hunger, poverty, domestic violence, and other ailments that already existed in our country have also been aggravated. Even in countrieswith a less dramatic situation as for example, inGermany, the pandemic has a terrible face. In the thirdwaveof the pandemic, incidence rates in children are far higher than in adultswith the looming tragedyof putting their parents lives in danger. Also in less dramatic respects, all the things we take for granted in our everyday lives have been shaken up completely: children can no longer easily go to school, to their sports clubs, to music lessons; adolescents can hardlymeet their peers, let alone go to parties and hang out in the park, in discos, or in pubs. Evenwe adults are forced to limit our social contacts, professionally, personally, and in our leisure activities. Social inequality has worsened. The gap between rich and poor, privileged and unprivileged is continuously widening: a family with small children living in a big house and garden obviously copes much better with the restrictions of the long lockdown than a family with a migrant background with several children in a three‐room apartment. Evidence shows that the number of depressive disorders and other psychosomatic and mental illnesses have increased. In the media, there are many reports of domestic violence and sexual assaults, especially on women and children that are increasing in frequency. The abyss of the human psyche has been cruelly brought to the surface. The societal consequences are enormous and only visible as iceberg peaks: the capacity of intensive care beds and medical units determine the lockdown measures, virologists have become the most powerful experts in the media and politics, jobs are threatened, international supply chains collapse, the social and economic consequences hardly assessable. Moreover, as border trolls are being reintroduced and the European idea seems to rapidly be swept away, predatory capitalism in the United States and the totalistic systems in China and Russia are proving to