CRITICA

Welcome to our Fall 2021 Issue of Critica! During 2020, many countries and cultures have been trying to navigate a world transformed by a Global Pandemic. From uncertainty to a steady state of curiosity, the authors in this issue grappled with the varied manifestations of a Covid life: inequalities, privilege, fear, masks, remote work, trauma, dreams, breakthrough infections, dystopian feelings, hope, among others. Internationally, necessary conversations regarding social and cultural influences in our current clinical thinking are expanding. A global pandemic hits and reminds us about the inevitable interrelation between self and the outer world. We are living under incredible pressure and enormous potential.

As I engaged with our submissions to create Critica’s flow, I felt deeply touched. Laurito presents us with a forgotten Brazilian land and community, living “between dystopia and hope” while Anderson’s words open our issue as she poetically invites us to “ tremble still in the face of heart and spleen love and courage”  as we “cradle our own otherness.” From empty pockets, Gerhart opens the door to a haunted house, and wonders “out loud about what lies hidden in plain sight in the being and bearing of the house next door.” Marino asserts that “we never stopped being a presence” and considers the “post-something” we are immersed into. McLarnan Lonely Lady strolls through an empty room, as Shifreen-Pomerantz invites us into a masked life, masked self, and the fragile protection layers we have been living with, reflecting on glitches, disruptions and visual overload. McLarnan declares his allegiance to the most ordinary things. Taymor ponders about the therapeutic mirrors of our clinical practice. Franey considers the pandemic as she reminds us  “to reflect upon the viral threat outside, but also to reflect upon the threat of the terrorist within” while Butler expresses that the “psychoanalytic thinker’s challenge is (not to forego safety but) to play at the edges of virulence.” 

We were offered several reflections on 52nd IPA Congress panels that considered current issues of psychoanalytic practice: group discussions as offering protective permeable boundary to engage with difficult emotional experiences; the essential role of social psychoanalysis in our current analytic enterprise; the creative dreams of Achuar, independent indigenous people who have never been conquered or colonized; the need to accept the legitimacy of values of others in responding to ethical questions in psychoanalytic institutions; the different training models and current issues in psychoanalytic training. 

Our book reviews considered two aspects of our work: the need to, now more than ever,  “remain internally vigilant over our own primeval dragons” (DiDonna) during termination; and the emotional complexity of “how painfully sad, angry, relieving, joyous it is to begin to reconcile with one’s past.” (Perna)

Our online issue offers four extra pieces: Sandler ponders about vaccination, breakthrough infections, and transitioning to in-person work; Mann reflects on how fairy tales support the development of children’s characters; Marcacci present us a beautifully animated interview with the artist Ester Grossi in which they “grasped something of the place and represented it, unconsciously, even without thinking to this: the depth of time, condensed in a glance”; and Asok embraces us in her poignant reflections around covid, loss, inequalities, prejudice, and the nuances of speaking up or not when facing the double-damaging impact of privilege. We end our online issue with the new vice-president of the IPA Adriana Prengler’s Closing Ceremony Speech, in which she addresses the opportunity for international dialogue that IPA offers us, highlighting the enrichment brought to us by diversity, and reminding us that in a world “in an acute time of troubles, the mind is in the line of fire, and we, as analysts, have much to offer.” 

I feel extremely grateful to the many voices on this issue. I am also very pleased to have John Mclaughlin join our Committee. John is a founding member of the California Circle of the Ecole Freudian du Quebec, and continues to attend yearly seminars given by analysts of GIFRIC. He is a very knowledgeable clinician, who brings to our committee his involvement with aesthetic expression. As always, I am deeply thankful to our hard-working Committee, who beyond offering many volunteer hours of their time, also engaged emotionally throughout this process as we visited and re-visited the intense experience of a pseudo-post-pandemic life. 

I hope you feel as touched by this issue as I did.