Smith, Tim (2024) Asking about my motorcycle: tracing a Covidian pathography through a child psychoanalytic psychotherapist’s recollection of his lockdown commutes. Psychoanalysis, Culture & Society . ISSN 1088-0763 (paper) ; 1543-3390 (electronic)

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Abstract

In this paper, I recollect the post-surgical loss of an important personal holding environment – my much-loved activity of running. In its aftermath the pandemic struck; and I describe my commute to and from my workplace, a public child mental health service in the UK, after finding a transitional object in a discarded bicycle, and later the purchase of my first motorcycle. I recount, from my perspective, my managers’ initial reactions to the challenging task of enabling a workforce to continue to care for child patients with mental illness. Then, seeking to understand the texture and depth of my experiences, I draw on several early personal recollections. I find that my mind posits a link to a childhood bicycle attachment that I forged in the wake of feelings of alienation from my mother; a situation that I am unsure I understood sufficiently during my training analysis. I then link a political dimension to my cycling with the initial response to the novel coronavirus by the UK’s government. As a result, I begin to construct a new holding environment for my experiences through autoethnography; as I trace a pathography that increasingly reveals the destructive impact on psychological services for children – and the frontline clinicians who staff them – of the austere, post-Brexit sociopolitical climate in which the pandemic occurred.

Item Type:	Article
Uncontrolled Keywords:	complacency, Covidian pathography, cycle commuting, organisational stress, professional shaming
Subjects:	Emotions, Affective Psychology > Grief/Mourning/Loss Emotions, Affective Psychology > Transitional Objects Human Psychological Processes > Strange Environment/Situation Psychological Therapies, Psychiatry, Counselling > Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy
Department/People:	Children, Young Adult and Family Services
URI:	https://repository.tavistockandportman.ac.uk/id/eprint/2943

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