Unmasked: Personal Transformations, Frame Alterations, and Making the Conscious Unconscious During the Traumatic Times of the COVID and Other Plagues

Abstract

This paper considers some of the paradoxes, challenges and opportunities we face in the shadow of the COVID-19 pandemic. I consider the ways in which masks serve necessary protective functions, while at the same time serving defensive roles in a different register. The ways in which “remote” work can function as an obstacle to therapeutic intimacy at the same time that it can deepen it, are considered.