pandemic 2

PANDEMIC!
milk—or, more simply even, adding the implied negation
and making the simple coffee into a coffee without milk.
The same thing has happened to my isolation. Prior to
the crisis, it was an isolation “without milk”—I could have
gone out, I just chose not to. Now it’s just the plain coffee
of isolation with no possible negation implied.
My friend Gabriel Tupinamba, a Lacanian psychoanalyst
who works in Rio de Janeiro, explained this paradox
to me in an email message: “people who already worked
from home are the ones who are the most anxious, and
exposed to the worst fantasies of impotence, since not
even a change in their habits is delimiting the singularity
of this situation in their daily lives.” His point is complex
but clear: if there is no great change in our daily reality,
then the threat is experienced as a spectral fantasy
nowhere to be seen and all the more powerful for that
reason. Remember that, in Nazi Germany, anti-Semitism
was strongest in those parts where the number of Jews
was minimal—their invisibility made them a terrifying
specter.
Although self-isolated, Tupinamba continues to analyse
patients via phone or skype. In his letter, he noted,
with some sarcasm, how analysts who previously, for
theoretical reasons, strictly opposed psychoanalytic
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