Covid-19 and Transitional Time Objects

Abstract

Due to the pandemic of coronavirus and the necessity of quarantine, the process of analysis sessions inevitably has become remote. This change can be very noticeable, especially for those analysands who have participated in face-to-face meetings. In a way, that makes a difference in the analyst's usage as a transitional time object and in the analysis sessions as transitional time phenomena. Inspired by the concept of Winnicott's transitional object and phenomenon, the second author has already defined the concepts of transitional time object and phenomenon in some papers. In this paper, the authors intend to explore the unconscious effect of coronavirus, by creating a physical distance between the analyst and analysand, on the sense of the passage of time in the analysis session. For this purpose, clinical examples have been pointed out and it has been found that the analysands understand the sense of the passage of time in remote sessions in various ways.