The prime example or idée clef that unites the chapters of this volume is the experience of the global Covid-19 pandemic from 2019 to 2023, in which we witnessed forms of isolation and withdrawal that meant something more than separation. Withdrawal and isolation work on the self, although they may not do so consciously. Whereas it is possible to be separated from others simply as a matter of fact and from the ‘outside,’ Getting Lost focuses on complex internal and psychopolitical processes involving retreat or removal of selves from the worlds of politics, society, and culture.
When we feel isolated or we withdraw ourselves, something tends to arise in our place: be it a defense system, a constellation of symptoms, or the deeply repressed psychic material giving rise to either or both. Thus, it was not coincidental that, as millions died from Covid, and as millions more experienced severely ‘broken sociality’ in the Covidian world of risk, quarantine, and/or lockdown, we also found ourselves witnessing explosions of extremism in popular discourse, in large-scale border closures, in encroachments on women’s and reproductive rights, in physical attacks on the Capitol Building in Washington, DC, in domestic and spousal violence and youth suicide, in a war of aggression waged by Russia on Ukraine, and much more.
We advance the term ‘psychopolitical isolation and withdrawal’ in order to capture not only temporary periods of isolation but also detachments from reality and perverse attachments to unreality, visible on small and large scales. This partial or perverse facing of our self-experience and shared experience suggests the possibility that the post-Covidian era brings with it altered relationships to both the private and the public home, and, with them, the meanings of citizenship, sociality, publicity, thinking, and being.
Plainly put, the impact of Covid-19 worldwide has damaged people’s relationship to reality and we are still coming to terms with and uncovering the many ways in which this manifests. This book aims to signal an immediate, existential threat to psychosocial and political life and to inspire further thinking, debate, and work on these vital topics that affect us all.
Matthew H. Bowker, Ph.D., is clinical assistant professor in the Social Sciences Interdisciplinary Program at SUNY, University at Buffalo. Educated at Columbia University and the University of Maryland, College Park, he is the author of more than fifteen books and several dozen scholarly essays. He coedits Routledge’s book series, Psychoanalytic Political Theory and is editor (N. America) for the Journal of Psycho-Social Studies (USA). Bowker’s primary research interests are critical psychopolitical theory, literary criticism, and political philosophy. His latest books are The Angels Won’t Help You (Punctum Books), The Destroyed World and the Guilty Self: A Psychoanalytic Study of Culture and Politics (with D. Levine, Phoenix), and Oblation: Essays, Parables, and Paradoxes (Punctum Books).
Amy Buzby has a Ph.D. in political science from Rutgers University—New Brunswick, and is an associate professor of political science at Arkansas State University. Her publications include Subterranean Politics and Freud’s Legacy and D. W. Winnicott and Political Theory: Recentering the Subject (with Dr. Matthew Bowker). She is currently working on a monograph about D. W. Winnicott and the political implications of his praxis.
Michael A. Diamond, PhD, Professor Emeritus of Public Affairs and Organization Studies, University of Missouri, Columbia –
‘A timely, deeply thoughtful collection of psychoanalytically framed accounts of the meaning of the Covid-19 pandemic, and of democracy’s inability to effectively manage it for so many citizens. These well-organized analytic reflections are worth reading over and over again. Thanks to the editors Matthew Bowker and Amy Buzby for exhibiting the under-appreciated explanatory compatibility of psychoanalytic theory and democratic theory for coping with catastrophic events.’
Kurt Jacobsen, University of Chicago and co-editor of Free Associations –
‘Matthew Bowker and Amy Buzby assemble a cast of sharp analysts to sift illuminatingly through the wreckage wrought as much by responses to Covid-19 as by the malady itself … Getting Lost is a valuable kickstart to post-mortems on the political consequences of the psychological dimension of the crisis.’
Barbara Wren, Consultant Psychologist, Director of Barbara Wren Psychology, and author of True Tales of Organisational Life –
‘The paradoxical nature of the Covid pandemic – creating longing for connection while thwarting it, unleashing the communal terror of an illness that had to be borne alone if we were all to survive – ripples through and shapes the world we live in now. This intriguing book seeks to make sense of its interpsychic, relational, and societal impacts. At a time of “world wrenching stress in public life” when our “individual and shared capacity for holding is collapsing,” these writers offer us a necessary form of containment, an opportunity to grieve for the elusive return to normal, and a reimagining of the challenges of public and private life in the context of that grief.’