Community response to the impact of Covid: psychoanalytic crisis intervention with a couple

This article focuses on the impact of the pandemic and the effect of the lockdown on couples and families. Covid challenged the analytic community to think about how psychoanalysis could inform an effective community response. The Madrid psychoanalytic community Asociación Psicoanalítica de Madrid (APM) responded by creating the APM-Covid-19 Commission: a significant number of well-trained psychoanalysts agreed to donate time for crisis intervention for couples and families at risk. Using technology to reach the patients in need, the analysts began to investigate the experience of virtual reality and its elaboration in the psyche. Having to use technology to provide couple therapy, the author found that she could address the processes of subjectivation in a couple whose defences were broken by the devastating effect of Covid on their financial security, emotional stability, individual sense of self, and couplehood.