Resistance and Revolution: Authority and the Analytic Situation During COVID-19

The author discusses a process of recommending returning to in-person analysis during the period from April to October 2021, after working by phone since March 2020. Clinical excerpts from several analytic cases are presented and discussed in terms suggested by that material and other sources. Previous work on interpretive authority and on the interpretation of verbal and nonverbal material, still generally relevant to the analytic situation, is discussed as a background for integrating more specific ideas particularly relevant to this phase of the COVID-19 pandemic, including preliminary concepts of revolution and resistance, danger and opportunity, and convenience and necessity.