Psychoanalysts’ work throughout the COVID-19 pandemic: An empirical study on teleanalysis during the Italian lockdown

The COVID-19 pandemic has brought several limitations in everyday life, which have, in turn, influenced psychoanalysts’ work with their patients. In Italy, in March 2020, a national lockdown was applied to the population, and this has led many psychoanalysts to work remotely with their patients. The aims of this study were to analyze psychoanalysts’ (N = 100) interventions’ style before and during the COVID-19 lockdown and to evaluate the impact of analysts’ feelings on their interventions style. Measures included the Comparative Psychotherapy Process scale, the Psychoanalytic Periodical Rating Scale, and the Feeling Word Checklist-24. Analysts rated an adult patient with no psychotic disorder whom they saw before (in-person) and during (remotely) the lockdown. Mixed robust analysis of variance showed that there were statistically significant differences in psychoanalysts’ interventions before and during the lockdown. These differences were also related to patients’ level of functioning, with an increase in cognitive behavioral (CB) interventions with neurotic patients during the lockdown and a decrease in interventions (both CB or psychodynamic) with borderline patients during the lockdown. Moreover, psychoanalysts tended to focus more on affects and less on unconscious experiences during the lockdown, compared to before. Resultsshowed the presence of significantly higher levels of negative-anxious feelings during the lockdown. CB interventions were significantly predicted by positive feelings and by negative-anxious feelings. These results seem to point toward some peculiarities related to the remote work with the patients during the lockdown, which should be addressed in everyday clinical practice.