A Polemic on the Pandemic: Death Does Not Makes Us Equal

Abstract

Taking as a point of departure an open letter that I co-signed and was sent to the analytic community in New York (later published in the European Journal of Psychoanalysis), which created quite a polemic, I address the false premises shared early in the pandemic that the virus was an equalizer between rich and poor. The North American experience showed that for Black and Latino people, death rates were disproportionally higher. This leads to previous work accomplished in the Philadelphia barrio clinics. The population has been ignored by most official accounts of psychoanalysis as being not suited for psychoanalysis. I share my experience working as a psychoanalyst with a marginalized, racialized community suffering high rates of mortality. I contend that even there psychoanalysis can function as a life affirming practice.

Keywords:

• Afropessimism Keyword: Afropessimism
• Covid 19 Keyword: Covid 19
• crisis Keyword: crisis
• pessimism Keyword: pessimism
• Psychoanalytic ethics Keyword: Psychoanalytic ethics
• Systemic racial inequalities Keyword: Systemic racial inequalities

How to Cite:

Rights: In Copyright