Western New England Psychoanalytic Society

This event addresses: COVID-19

Speaker: Paola Contreras, PsyD

The presenter will describe how Ogden’s description of two forms of thinking ––dream thinking and transformative thinking–– are preceded by the Magical of the session. Drawing on her external and internal experiences amidst the unrest experienced in response to the COVID pandemic, the author describes the use of what she terms the analyst’s my-person involvement. She explains the my-person concept. She argues that the involvement of the analyst’s my-person permits the Magical of the session to continue to occur, especially during times of great social unrest. The author uses my-person content, clinical examples, and references to magical realism to describe the Magical of analytic work and how the analyst contributes to it. Additionally, the presenter will discuss how the covid pandemic helped psychoanalysis question and rework the frame revealing its malleability. The external and intrapsychic are intimately connected, an idea that has challenged psychoanalysis from its very inception, and that resurfaced in the covid crisis.