key: cord-0966988-0z4hu9m1 authors: Facchin, Federica title: The Year of Sad Passions: A Second Letter from Northern Italy date: 2021-07-05 journal: Br J Psychother DOI: 10.1111/bjp.12653 sha: d9f300d8017ce5f7f3744b71d4074e5a69894232 doc_id: 966988 cord_uid: 0z4hu9m1 nan patients, especially during online sessions. Her partner is currently working from home, the schools have been closed again, and her child needs support with remote learning. This young woman, who recently lost two close ones due to coronavirus, feels completely exhausted, and she is worried that her fatigue could compromise the quality of her work. She does not want her patients, as well as her child, to notice how tired she is. Her feeling of exhaustion challenges the superego injunctions that force her to act like she is always fine and able to please the others. Supervision reminds her that clinical practice involves making room for humanity in all its manifestations. At the same time, our complaints about homeworking may sound quite ridiculous, if one considers that a Covid-19 redundancy fund procedure has been set up for millions of workers, and thousands of people lost their job. As reported by the Italian National Institute of Statistics (ISTAT), 101,000 jobs were lost in December 2020. Of these newly unemployed, 99,000 were women. The unemployment rate rose to 9.0% and to 29.7% among young people (ISTAT, 2021). The pandemic has been exacerbating pre-existing socioeconomic inequalities, and women and youth are bearing the brunt of this crisis, not to mention the global increase in domestic and gender-based violence (Barbara et al., 2020) . The lockdown, although necessary, enclosed us in a confined space with an unbreathable atmosphere, especially for children and adolescents. Remote learning has been revealing dysfunctional family dynamics, as recounted by T., a high school teacher, who has been stressed by parents' intrusions during online lessons. On the other hand, symbiotic mothers celebrated lockdown as a unique chance to enjoy their children by spending most of the time together, whereas others (like R., the young psychologist) have been wondering if they were monsters for feeling overwhelmed by parenting. A huge amount of suffering to deal with, in both scenarios. In this year of sad passions (fear, rage, resentment), the virus has been shrinking our horizon of projects, hopes and expectations, and social uncertainty is turning into a sense of the precariousness of our own being. Unfortunately, the mediaat least in Italyhave been feeding people's incandescent feelings of insecurity, anger, and exhaustion with clickbait and misleading articles, especially regarding vaccines. Communication became chaotic and distressing. Such a perfect breeding ground for conspiracy theories. This ethical crisis derives from the subjugation of knowledge and information to the logic of contemporary capitalism. The capitalist discourse is based on the idea that the market provides solutions to all types of human problems, so that everything is possible, including a life with zero risks. This deceptive illusion, in which illness and death are no longer an option, has been tragically exposed by the pandemic: our existence is not guaranteed. In other words, everyoneand in every part of the worldnow has to confront the limited nature of humanity. During the pandemic, we had to deal with the traumatic encounter with the absence of guarantees, and some people tried to protect themselves from the unbearable anguish deriving from this experience by becoming Covid deniers. Psychoanalysis is now called on to explore and treat the long-term consequences of coronavirus (which are still unknown), and to link them to the contemporary forms of discontent of our civilization. The pandemic contributed to further highlight the inner connection between the individual and the sociopolitical register, which should guide psychoanalytic investigation and clinical practice. The storm is not over and there will be no rainbows at the end of this devastating pandemic. It is no longer time for songs and dances, it is time for action. There is much to be done for our wounded humanity. In these difficult times, the precious tools offered by psychoanalysis may help us to turn chaos, rage, and fear into an actual transformative experience for the subject and the community. This is my message of hope. Covid-19, lockdown, and intimate partner violence: Some data from an italian service and suggestions for future approaches For weeks now it has been evening': A letter from Northern Italy Employed and Unemployed. Preliminary Data Editor's comments Connecting through technology during the coronavirus Disease 2019 pandemic: Avoiding 'Zoom fatigue The author would like to thank the Editor-in-Chief of the British Journal of Psychotherapy, Ann Scott. The author also thanks her friend Giussy Barbara, who read this letter (which was not easy to write) and provided suggestions.