Psychoanalysis with young children during the first wave of the Covid-19 pandemic: mapping the questions

ABSTRACT

This paper examines the rapid and dramatic influences that the first wave of the Covid-19 pandemic had on the author’s practice of child psychoanalysis. The author describes the changes in daily routine and the measures that had to be taken to follow regulations and stay ‘on the safe side’, on the one hand, while maintaining the continuity of analyses on the other. This change was rapid and intense, and the main feature of this period was the loss of the ability to withhold action, to stop and think, and to let mental and psychical processes run their course – a feature we are so accustomed to in our usual practice. The consequences of this process are still to be explored, and need more time and perspective for the full impact to be understood. In this paper, the author maps a few issues that will have to be dealt with more fully after the pandemic is over.

KEYWORDS:

• Covid-19
• child psychoanalysis
• e-therapy
• crisis management
• setting

Disclosure statement

The author reports no conflict of interest.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Ehud Wolpe

Ehud Wolpe is a clinical psychologist and a child and adult psychoanalyst at the Israel Psychoanalytic Society. He has worked for many years in the Association for Children at Risk, in therapeutic kindergartens for children with Autistic Spectrum Disorder, and as a clinical psychologist and supervisor. He presently works in a private practice in Tel Aviv. He teaches courses on Kleinian theory and primitive mental states at the Israel Psychoanalytic Society and at the ‘Primitive Mental States’ advanced track of studies, Psychotherapy Program, Tel Aviv University. His major fields of interest include children on the autistic spectrum and children of delayed verbal development, as well as early mental states in children and adults.