https://doi.org/10.4081/ripppo.2020.487
Living under lockdown in the shadow of the COVID-19 pandemic in South Africa: anxious voices from the unplanned shift to online therapy
Submitted: August 4, 2020
Accepted: October 13, 2020
Published: January 14, 2021
Accepted: October 13, 2020
Abstract Views: 2717
PDF: 611
HTML: 19
HTML: 19
Publisher's note
All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.
All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.
Authors
This paper is a narrative, phenomenological description of the themes of experiences of some of my South African patients that collectively elicit anxious voices from the unplanned shift to online therapy while living under the world’s longest lockdown in the shadow of the coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. This paper thus presents a thematic description of moments in therapy, which illustrate the influence of lockdown on their sense of self, and the emergence of new anxieties not encountered before. Such themes are: i) new anxieties about death and dying; ii) new anxieties about loss of contact with friends and family and the emergence of existential anxiety; iii) new anxieties about current household relationships and the emergence of object loss; iv) new anxieties about the unplanned shift to online therapy and the threat of internet dis-connection, and finally; v) new anxieties about missing body parts of online therapy: Part-body-on-the-screen relating versus what-was-once-whole-body relating. As this paper is based on psychoanalytic theory, and the notion of intersubjectivity, my own experiences and thoughts are included in the therapeutic engagement. The core contribution of this paper is that it adds a voice to the other voices of other patients around the world who are also living under lockdown. Without this kind of narrative documentation, the world-wide therapeutic community may not know the extent of the anxieties of living under lockdown in the shadow of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Cipolletta, S., Frassoni, E., & Faccio, E. (2018). Construing a therapeutic relationship online: An analysis of videoconference sessions. Clinical Psychologist 22(2), 220-229.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/cp.12117
Frankl, V. (1963). Man’s search for meaning. Boston: Beacon Press.
Freud, S. (1920). Beyond the pleasure principle. Standard edition of the complete psychological works of Sigmund Freud (vol. 18, pp. 1-64). London, UK: Hogarth Press.
Freud, S. (1923). The ego and the id. Standard edition of the complete psychological works of Sigmund Freud, (vol. 19, 1-66). London, UK: Hogarth Press.
Frommer, M. S. (2005). Living in the liminal spaces of mortality. Psychoanalytic Dialogues, 15(4), 479-498.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/10481881509348845
Frommer, M. S. (2016). Death is nothing at all: on contemplating non-existence. A relational psychoanalytic engagement of the fear of death. Psychoanalytic Dialogues, 26(4), 373-390.
Gerson, S. (2009). When the third is dead: memory, mourning, and witnessing in the aftermath of the Holocaust. The International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 90(6), 1341-1357.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1745-8315.2009.00214.x
Hoffman, I. (2013). Response to Slavin: Considering the evolutionary and existential contexts of dialectical constructivism. Psychoanalytic Dialogues, 23(3), 315-323.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/10481885.2013.794645
Klein, M. (1957). Envy and gratitude. In M. Klein (Ed.), Envy and gratitude (pp. 176-235). New York: Dell.
Klein. M. (1958). On the development of mental functioning. In M. Klein (Ed.), Envy and gratitude (pp. 236-246). New York: Dell.
Knight, Z. G. (2019). I am surrounded by death: death as a defining psychic issue within a relational psychoanalytic engagement and the impact of the therapist’s relationship with death. Journal of Research in Psychotherapy: Psychopathology, Process and Outcome, 22(2), 308-316.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.4081/ripppo.2019.385
Manfrida, G., Albertini, V., & Eisenberg, E. (2017). Connected: Recommendations and techniques in order to employ internet tools for the enhancement of online therapeutic relationships. Experiences from Italy. Contemporary Family Therapy, 39, 314-328.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10591-017-9439-5
Mitchell, S. (2002). Can love last: The fate of romance over time. New York, NY: W.W. Norton.
Piven, J. (2003). Introduction. The Psychoanalytic Review, 90(4), 395-402.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1521/prev.90.4.395.23918
Razinsky, L. (2013). Freud, psychoanalysis and death. London, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Slavin, M. O. (2011). Lullaby on the dark side: Existential anxiety, making meaning and the dialectic of self and other. In L. Aron & A. Harris (Eds.), Relational psychoanalysis: Vol. 4: Expansion of theory (pp. 391-413). Hillsdale, NJ: The Analytic Press.
Slavin, M. O. (2013). Meaning, mortality, and the search for realness and reciprocity: An evolutionary/existential perspective on Hoffman’s dialectical constructivism. Psychoanalytic Dialogues, 23(3), 296-314.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/10481885.2013.794643
Slavin, M. O. (2016). Relational psychoanalysis and the tragic existential aspect of the human condition. Psychoanalytic Dialogues, 26(5), 537-548.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/10481885.2016.1214465
Tillich, P. (1952). The courage to be. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Winnicott, D. (1951). Transitional objects and transitional phenomena. In D. Winnicott, Through pediatrics to psychoanalysis (pp. 229-242). New York, NY: Basic Books.
Winnicott, D. (1960). The theory of the parent-infant relationship. In D. Winnicott, The maturational processes and the facilitating environment (pp. 37-55). New York, NY: International Universities Press.
Winnicott, D. (1971). Playing and reality. London, UK: Routledge. Yalom, I. (2008). Staring at the sun: Overcoming the terror of death. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
How to Cite
Knight, Z. G. (2021). Living under lockdown in the shadow of the COVID-19 pandemic in South Africa: anxious voices from the unplanned shift to online therapy. Research in Psychotherapy: Psychopathology, Process and Outcome, 23(3). https://doi.org/10.4081/ripppo.2020.487
Copyright (c) 2020 Zelda Gillian Knight
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
PAGEPress has chosen to apply the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC 4.0) to all manuscripts to be published.
Similar Articles
- Andrzej Werbart, Siri Aldèn, Anders Diedrichs, Changes in the anaclitic-introjective personality configurations following psychoanalytic psychotherapy with young adults , Research in Psychotherapy: Psychopathology, Process and Outcome: Vol. 20 No. 1 (2017)
- Mariagrazia Di Giuseppe, Katie Aafjes-van Doorn, Vera Békés, Bernard S. Gorman, Karl Stukenberg, Sherwood Waldron, Therapists’ defense use impacts their patients’ defensive functioning: a systematic case study , Research in Psychotherapy: Psychopathology, Process and Outcome: Vol. 27 No. 2 (2024)
- Gianluca Cruciani, Marianna Liotti, Vittorio Lingiardi, Motivations to become psychotherapists: beyond the concept of the wounded healer , Research in Psychotherapy: Psychopathology, Process and Outcome: Vol. 27 No. 2 (2024)
- CV Vijayapriya, Rameshbabu Tamarana, Effectiveness of internet-delivered dialectical behavior therapy skills training on executive functions among college students with borderline personality traits: a non-randomized controlled trial , Research in Psychotherapy: Psychopathology, Process and Outcome: Vol. 26 No. 3 (2023)
- Irene Messina, Vincenzo Calvo, Alessandro Grecucci, Attachment orientations and emotion regulation: new insights from the study of interpersonal emotion regulation strategies , Research in Psychotherapy: Psychopathology, Process and Outcome: Vol. 26 No. 3 (2023)
- Research Group for treatment for Anxiety and Depression, Psychotherapies for Anxiety and Depression: benefits and costs , Research in Psychotherapy: Psychopathology, Process and Outcome: Vol. 20 No. 2 (2017)
- Claudia Capella, Loreto Rodríguez, Estrella Azócar, Ximena Lama, Lucía Núñez, Daniela Águila, Camila Gomez, Macarena Espeleta, Vania Vasquez, Psychotherapeutic change in children and adolescents who have been sexually abused: a model from participants’ perspectives , Research in Psychotherapy: Psychopathology, Process and Outcome: Vol. 25 No. 1 (2022)
- Kelsey Armusewicz, Miriam Steele, Howard Steele, Anne Murphy, Assessing therapist and clinician competency in parent-infant psychotherapy: The REARING coding system (RCS) for the group attachment based intervention (GABI) , Research in Psychotherapy: Psychopathology, Process and Outcome: Vol. 25 No. 1 (2022)
- Helena Carvalho, Gil Nata, Paula Mena Matos, How secure is the secure base? Romantic attachment, emotion regulation, and psychotherapists’ role as secure base figures , Research in Psychotherapy: Psychopathology, Process and Outcome: Vol. 27 No. 1 (2024)
- Giovanna Esposito, Viviana Perla, Raffaella Passeggia, Erik Fertuck, Erhard Mergenthaler, Reflective functioning and personal recovery process of users with borderline personality disorder on Instagram: an explorative study using computerized and thematic analysis , Research in Psychotherapy: Psychopathology, Process and Outcome: Vol. 23 No. 3 (2020)
<< < 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 > >>
You may also start an advanced similarity search for this article.
