Unmasked: Personal Transformations, Frame Alterations, and Making the Conscious Unconscious During the Traumatic Times of the COVID and Other Plagues

Abstract

This paper considers some of the paradoxes, challenges and opportunities we face in the shadow of the COVID-19 pandemic. I consider the ways in which masks serve necessary protective functions, while at the same time serving defensive roles in a different register. The ways in which “remote” work can function as an obstacle to therapeutic intimacy at the same time that it can deepen it, are considered.

Keywords:

• paradox
• covid
• frame
• intimacy
• vulnerability

This article refers to:

Discussion on the Paper by Anthony Bass “Unmasked: Personal Transformations, Frame Alterations, and Making the Conscious Unconscious During the Traumatic Times on the COVID and Other Plagues”

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Anthony Bass

Anthony Bass, PhD is on the teaching faculty and clinical consultant at the NYU Postdoctoral Program. He is faculty, and training and supervising analyst at the Columbia University Center for Psychoanalytic Training and Research, and a founder and president of the Stephen Mitchell Relational Study Center. He teaches at NIP in the National Training Program. He is editor emeritus of Psychoanalytic Dialogues: the International Journal of Relational Perspectives.