Boston Psychoanalytic Society & Institute

This event addresses: COVID-19, Mortality

Death haunts human life. We cope by seeking a tolerable place between denial and terror. COVID, and overlapping existential threats, bring this struggle to the surface. Psychoanalysis believes that truth offers freedom. But how do we look at the truth of death, when our own mortality, and that of those we hold dear, feels intolerable?

This panel offers a space to share this dilemma together, clinically and personally. Our theme is set by Orpheus, for whom not looking was to be the means of undoing the loss of his beloved Eurydice. But this isn’t a panel about mythology. Our use of Orpheus is merely to follow him into the territory of death and loss, of looking at and simultaneously denying our truth.