Psychoanalytic Darkness and Reflections on the Coronavirus

“The ‘viral’ aspect of the Coronavirus pandemic and the disproportionate effect on the aged similarly suggests a Jungian reading of systemic breakdown and a lurch towards either symbolic or literal death.”

It is clear that the Coronavirus evokes deep responses from the psyche. Social media has become an infinitely extending outpouring of emotion, alternating between exasperated torment and manic, forced optimism. Emotional displacement and unconscious defenses are evoked by the threat of imminent death, forced isolation, and systemic collapse. Taking a view of this crisis through psychoanalysis and depth psychology, we can gain insight into the human condition—grappling with what is evoked by the pandemic and analyzing what might be behind the psychological eruptions we are faced with. In this article, I will be drawing on the work of Lacanian and Jungian analytical approaches in order to try to bring some light to the experience of the Coronavirus and why it impacts us so deeply. This, however, will not be an instance of psychotherapeutic self-help and trite “positive thinking to get you through the crisis” but an invitation to look unflinchingly at what we might be called to face within ourselves and our social environment as a result of this pandemic. To begin with, I will be drawing on some theory around horror and disturbance by looking at the concept of the “abject” in the work of Julia Kristeva, as how this might be evoked by the impact of the Coronavirus.

Abject Horror

The psychoanalyst and philosopher Julia Kristeva in her 1980 book Powers of Horror describes the abject as being the unconscious material within the psyche that is expelled in order for an individual to gain a clear sense of self. Drawing not only on Jacques Lacan’s work but also on the work of Melanie Klein (among other figures of psychoanalysis), Kristeva saw the expulsion (e.g. abjection) of this raw psychic material as being part of the way in which the individual psyche formed a coherent sense of what was self and what was “other.” This constituted a primal stage of developing a sense of individuality, a parsing of oneself from the undifferentiated “Real,” a process which I have also described in a previous article.

This abjected, expelled psychic material is—first of all—psychologically projected onto physical objects which are evacuated from the body: for instance, vomit, feces, and other assorted bodily functions. These expulsions do not rid the psyche of the material totally but create the psychic distance, or dividing line between “Self” and abjected “non-self” within the psyche of the individual. Kristeva observed that this abject material can also be projected onto other people within the community, rather than just our own physical expulsions: Criminals, lepers, psychotics, immigrants, etc. can all become representatives of the abject to us. As a society, we often see the impact of this psychic projection playing out politically; witness the collective, systemic, and personal anxiety that these figures of the abject represent to those whose identities are more firmly situated within “the system.” They often evoke the creeping feeling that these populations will cause a breakdown of the entire structure of society should they not be checked and kept at a distance (or “quarantined”) in some way.