Setting and confinement.

“(...) All of us must stay home no matter what, but our houses are not the same, thus we have a universal falsehood... we are all not the same” Dario Stajnszrajber (Marca de Radio)

For a very long time; remote sessions implied changes in settings. Space and time variables (especially with patients from other countries) were modified, leading to reflections about the “real” presence of the therapists, the presence of their bodies, the intimacy, among other issues. Virtuality made possible the sessions – the therapist would be in the consulting room and the patient would be at home, at work, in the car or in the park.... in other words, a place allowing the communication between the two of them.

From the beginning of the quarantine, the statement #ISTAYATHOME – which exhorts and forces us to remain confined – leads me to wonder if all the aspects relating to the setting were becoming more and more important. Etchegoyen interprets Bleger's proposal in Los Fundamentos de la Técnica Psicoanalítica (The basis of the psychoanalytic technique) – establishing a difference between the function that remains unaltered and the meaning that does change since “an essentially silent setting does not exist, for the setting is always meaningful.” (Etchegoyen, 1993. p.485).

What are the effects on having the session in another place by obligation? THE HOUSE – being different from what it was before the quarantine – becomes (in most of the cases for the therapist, who is not in the consulting room, but also for the patient) “the-house-where-I-have-to-stay”. From this, I can notice through the patients' narratives how the house went from being located at the background to the foreground, thus unveiling new meanings.

A shelter, a prison, a time of suspension, the same old place, a home?

(The confinement reveals that, unfortunately, the big socioeconomic differences and the uncertain future will not be the same for all of us. When listening to the patients, I found out that the main reason why they are suffering from different levels of distress during the confinement is the concern about the economic support and also the uncertainty about keeping the job.)

HOUSE, ABODE, DWELLING... HOME

When listening to the patients carefully, “the-house-where-I-have-to-stay” is becoming either a pleasant or a hostile place, and in some cases, the experiences of the patients do not change from those before the quarantine.

Alberto states that the reality of the confinement has not changed the feeling of friendliness, protection and comfort which he has felt about his abode since some time ago.

“I must admit that, as I work all week at home since some months ago, this reality has not changed me. I like all the advices that are constantly given about how to organize yourself because I have never thought about it, but the day by day is not affecting me. I know it cannot be acceptable but I am feeling that way. “

A young woman affirms:

“I am fine, my flatmates are not here and it is surprising to feel that I can be alone and have the whole house to myself. However, I feel sudden anguish when I think about my parents and about the fact that they are alone...”

In other cases, the dwelling becomes a hostile place:

A housewife patient, to whom it was difficult to go the face-to-face sessions because of a phobia and who was having remote sessions, told me before the quarantine:

“It is better to have remote sessions because your consulting room is on the other side of the town.”

She was usually the only one who enjoyed the house, but from the beginning of the --quarantine everything changed:

“I can be alone, you know that, but now I am finding it unbearable, I like being at home doing the household, but now that everybody is here I feel shut-in.”

IF IT WERE UP TO ME, I WOULD STAY LIKE THIS ALL MY LIFE!

I must stop in this statement from a patient, which surprised me, so I will also get to listen to her out of the psychotherapy setting. Through several conversations what is expressed is that leaving the house makes them feel stressed and that “the house is the place where I feel most comfortable”. The patient who stated this last sentence found by herself a subject unrelated to the actual situation.

Lina is a middle-age woman who works in an enterprise (she is the marketing manager) and who started working at home from the beginning of the quarantine. She lives with her husband, who is also teleworking, and her three teenage children.

Lina told me that something different was happening at different levels, related to both the working and familiar environments.
“I do not have to make up, get dressed and get on the road, which requires extra time.”

“I would tell you that even if I am working more than before, now it is me the one who controls the situations and answers in the appropriate time. I do not have to settle the simultaneous needs of my employees, it is a big difference from having them present. I can take my time.”

“It is the first time that we have lunch and dinner altogether, I cannot remember that we have ever done it like that! And we are eating better!”

“We are trying to communicate in a different way; when my son Pedro riles me up I get to think: how can I manage this? I have to restrain myself...”

“You do not know what it is not to be worried about the time my children arrive, if they are outside, where they are... it is such a relief!”
The statements of the patient express her conflicts inside a society where, as Bleichmar suggests S,. (2009.p.171), “the subject is defined by his/her performance and not by who he/she is.” pointing out:

*The appearance of hiper-demand, due to disproportionate ideals leading to the subjugation to the gaze of others.

*The quick response, where “reality is saturation” (Corea, 2008, p-64) and how subjectivity is being set up around.

*As well as the teenage crisis in the family and also in the society.

However, what I find interesting is to look back at this meaning of the-house-that-I- cannot-leave, which, through this narrative, is felt as a shelter, “a nest” - that is how Lina expressed it – but I also consider that makes larger the representation that she had before. Using the examples she gives, some of them totally new, she expresses that the coercive about the situation makes her face up to the enrollment in a new place, “the home” and that she had never lived it like that. As suggested by Góes Da Cruz(2001,p.181.)

“It has been a while since the house underwent changes: it was formerly a cozy and particular place, a family reference; today it does not have such a strong reference, perhaps because of a change in the own family structure and lifestyle. Currently, everybody works from early in the morning, travels on their holidays and even though they all live in the same house, they spend little time together...”

From this situation onwards, Lina's relationship with her house (home?) is enriched with new experiences: food, approach, shared time... Her dwelling had never been mentioned before during the sessions, what was shown was a continuous complaint about her rhythm of life, about the difficulties with her teenage children and chronic tiredness. From this traumatic episode we all are going through, she talks about the house as A PLACE for the first time. In his interesting book Los No Lugares. Espacios del Anonimo (The NON-places. Anonymity's spaces), Augé claims that people of super modernity go from THE PLACE TO THE NON-PLACE, building that way their identity “at the customs control, at the toll or at the cash desk. While they are waiting, they obey the same code than the others, they register the same messages, they answer to the same requests. The space of non-place do not create a singular identity nor a relationship, but loneliness and similarity.

I wonder if the representation that Lina had about the therapy in the consulting room also implied another NON-PLACE and surprisingly, the meaning of the-house-we-cannot-leave makes her, for the first time, be able to think about her and about me in a different way.

Paradoxes of the mind during the confinement; for some people, the experience of being at home becomes a lockdown and for others, a new place is being born during the confinement. A home?

BIBLIOGRAFÍA

Augé, M. (2000). Los No lugares. Espacios del anonimato. Una antropología de la sobremodernidad. Barcelona. Gedisa. Quiroga, A. (1979). Crisis, Ruptura y Superación. Buenos Aires. Ediciones
Cinco Bleger, J.(1966). Psicoanálisis del Encuadre Psicoanalítico. Trabajo Segundo Congreso Psicoanalítico. Buenos Aires. Paidós
Bleichmar, S. (2009). Superar la inmediatez. Un modo de pensar nuestro tiempo. Buenos Aires. Centro Cultural de la Cooperación Floreal Gorini.
Corea, C. y Lewkowicz, I. (2008) Pedagogía del Aburrido. Escuelas destituídas, familias perplejas. Buenos Aires. Paidós Educador.
Etchegoyen, R. H. (1993).Los fundamentos de la técnica psicoanalítica. Buenos Aires.
Amorrortu. Rabello De Castro, L. (Ed.) (2001).Infancia y adolescencia en la cultura del consumo. Buenos Aires. Lumen.
Goes Da Cruz, A. (1999). Espacio Urbano y Transformación de la subjetividad del niño y del adolescente. Río de Janeiro. Nau Editora
Sztajnszrajber, D. (11/04/20).Filosofía en tiempos de pandemia. Marca de Radio. Recuperado de. https://ar.radiocut.fm/audiocut/dario-sztajnszrajber-con-eduardo-aliverti/

TRADUCCIÓN POR: Sofía Wassaul Barragán