PATRICE LA MARIANA, LP
The terrible arrival of the Covid-19 pandemic in NYC last March brought with it both personal and analytic challenges in work with my patients as the sudden threat of illness, death, and unmeasurable contagion affected us both equally and simultaneously. We lost the shared universe of my office, and, while disembodied by electronics, resonating in a shared nightmare, we have been linked psychically only by our words, our hearing, and our voices. As the weeks wore on, I realized that my experience was becoming increasingly visual and filled with images. Hanna Segal considered the experience of separation as the pre-condition for the onset of symbol formation and observed that this process brings together and integrates the internal with the external, the subject with the object, and the earlier experiences with the later ones. Moved by the words of my patient, “Hassani”, I began this portal which began as an attempt to combine the symbols of our unconscious matrix, and which has become an effort at artistic and analytic containment.
A Portal to Hassani during Covid-19 NYC
(Sculpture/Collage, 7” x 5” x 2”)
I turned a tree stump into a clock without hands and writing” Bleach”, “Grief,”” Hope”, and” Patience” in pastels. The rings of the tree measure developmental time in the timelessness of unconscious experience, with collaged photos of Buddhas wrapped in transparent plastic, an antique globe and “Hasani’s” words, copied onto a spiral of brown paper. The words lead inward to the center circle, which says, “It’s hard to think that we haven’t gone farther than two blocks away from here in the last two months.” Some words are blurred because the paper was painted with bleach. It seems right that the words hang in space, taking different shapes and positions. The portal leads to a collaged, pre- Covid-19 New Yorker Cover which reflects Hassani’s longing for the subway, his headphones, his freedom and for all that separates him from Manhattan (and my office). A Portal to Hassani during Covid-19 NYC reflects Hassani’s words and the countertransference of my unconscious artistic response.