Medical, psychoanalytical, and political thoughts on a shared obsessional neurosis

Abstract

The scope of this paper is to present some medical, psychoanalytic, and political thoughts on the Covid-19 pandemic. A medical catastrophe cannot be without political consequences and indeed, in this initial period of the pandemic, the stakes are already high, with increased risks of nationalism, totalitarianism, digital capitalism, and medical populism. The Lacanian categories of the Real and the Symbolic, the clinical structure of obsessional neurosis, and the concepts of enjoyment and of the “letter” are the tools used in the paper. On this basis, Lacanian psychoanalysis, in dialogue with medicine, political science, and sociology, presents an analysis of the pandemic crisis.