PSYCHOANALYSIS AND PSYCHOANALYTIC PSYCHOTHERAPY IN UKRAINE DURING THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC UNFOLDING: THE RESULTS OF PRACTITIONERS’ SURVEY

The current unavoidable COVID-19 situation may affect psychoanalytic practice – at least in its setting and format – which has always been understood as a significant frame, and even as “the third”, of psychoanalysis. That is why specific clinical observations of unfolding unconscious © Mariana Velykodna, Halyna Tsyhanenko DOI (Article): https://doi.org/10.31108/1.2021.7.1.2 32 PSYCHOLOGICAL JOURNAL Volume 7 Issue 1 (45) 2021 Volume 7 Issue 1 (45) 2021 http://www.apsijournal.com/ ISSN 2414-0023 (Print) ISSN 2414-004X (Online) DOI (Issue): https://doi.org/10.31108/1.2021.7.1 processes which may be manifested during psychoanalytic sessions and relevant setting and technique modifications in this period are of extreme importance. The results of the Ukrainian psychoanalysts’ and psychoanalytic psychotherapists’ survey have shown that the majority of respondents tried to continue their practice in new pandemic conditions, which was more successful with the more experienced (in years) practitioners. However, 1/6 of the respondents had to suspend their practice due to the quarantine. Almost half of the psychoanalysts and psychotherapists implemented some setting or format changes due to the COVID-19 unfolding. These were predominantly financial re-agreements, including the reduction or long delay of payment, shifting to the remote format of sessions, and a reduction in the number of sessions per week; however with some analyzants, the process was suspended due to the quarantine restrictions. Those who continued practicing noted rather unanimously that their patients had experienced new intense feelings in particular those of fear, anxiety, being “castrated”, aggression and anger, along with hope and hopelessness – although the variety of feelings was, in fact, extensive and included even relief and freedom. About a half of the respondents mentioned some changes in transference and countertransference, which we found complementary during the studied period, that was also associated with the duration of practical experience, certification status, guidelines from psychoanalytic associations, and patients’ readiness to speak on pandemic-related or quarantine -related topics. While the majority of respondents confirmed perceived support from colleagues, they were chiefly dependent on associations’ attentiveness and, surprisingly, the main method. The heterogeneity of the obtained observations regarding most survey categories (i.e., setting, topics at the sessions, transference, and countertransference), with distribution close to half-to-half, not only shows the current significant role of every particular psychoanalyst who deals with the developing COVID-19 in their own way, but also raises the question of a possible splitting in the psychoanalytic community, reflecting the unconscious response from the population towards the viral danger.


Introduction.
In the context of the worldwide COVID-19 pandemic unfolding and consequential quarantines in the most of affected countries, practitioners in various fields of psychological support and psychotherapy were facing new extraordinary and unavoidable conditions. Such developments required urgent decisions to be made regarding either changes in the organization of practice, or its suspension altogether. The surveyed psychologists and psychotherapists using different approaches noticed that, during the first cases of novel coronavirus in the region, practitioners from the Eastern Europe (53.1% from Ukraine) had observed or implemented certain changes and modifications in their practice, e.g., the remote format of sessions, financial re-agreements, reshaping the purposes of their interven-tions towards coping with psychological outcomes of quarantine restrictions and towards self-support, etc. (Velykodna, Frankova, 2020). These changes may have significant consequences for psychoanalytic phenomena and the psychoanalytic setting as a whole, and therefore should be reconsidered. The clinical observations of the unfolding unconscious processes, manifested in predominant feelings, free associations, and transferencecountertransference dynamics are no less important.
Analysis of current evidence. From the beginning of the pandemic, psychoanalysts have been actively discussing the observed impact of the novel coronavirus, along with governmental policies and imposed quarantines, on the personal and social life of a patient -not only in the form of published works (i.e., in journals) but also in short essays on social media, personal blogs, online-seminars and in private conversations. In Ukraine, two-thirds of the surveyed psychoanalysts and psychoanalytic psychotherapists admitted that due to the COVID-19 pandemic unfolding they had been searching for relevant theoretical conceptions related to (a) individual psychic response to the pandemic and lockdown, (b) social or psychic response, (c) ways to keep psychoanalytic stance, (d) particular issues of patients manifested due to the COVID-19 crisis, (e) certain interventions, including non-analytic (Velykodna, Tsyhanenko, 2020).
Most published psychoanalytic works related to COVID-19 are devoted to the psychoanalysis of "mass pandemic psychology" and to reports of psychoanalytic practice. Thus, H. Steel (2020) considers common fears pertaining to COVID-19 in the context of fear of annihilation and fear of loss of love object. J. S. Blackman (2020) analyses typical unconscious defensive reactions (e.g. obsessive cleaning, counterphobic behavior, humor, and denial) and in-home conflicts as neurotic repetitions of unresolved childhood issues due to regression provoked by the pandemic. S. Benvenuto (2020) describes several unconscious fantasies and beliefs which are manifested during the COVID-19 crisis. The first belief is that children are more fragile than the elderly, which covers an unconscious hope that the elderly will die, and which S. Benvenuto insightfully comments on as one of the possible reasons why the government may feel the urge to actually support a growing state of fear during the pandemic; only the fear of their own deaths can cause young citizens to truly support social distancing for the sake of saving elderly people. The second belief manifests itself in the compulsive buying of toilet paper; whereby S. Benvenuto considers people to unconsciously associate pandemics with uncleanliness and impurity, i.e., in relation to the sin and feces. It may also be associated with the fact that the original meaning of the virus was a slimy, liquid poison, or venom (H. Zwart, 2018).
Besides, S. Benvenuto analyzes the detestation and denial of numbers and statistics (e.g., fatal cases), in an attempt to disregard anything that is "inhuman", and "fake news" as collective paranoid productions based on unconscious beliefs of the society. J. Bolanos, J. Lucero & F. B. Raz (2020) are reflecting on the pandemic effects from biologi-cal and humanistic viewpoints in the context of Lacan's concept of Truth and its relation to science. S. Western (2020) reflects on the unconscious meaning of the coronavirus in terms of Lacan's register of the Real, and claims that COVID-19 becomes a signifier of contagion in the situation of the traumatic intrusion of the Real. The author also notes that such an intrusion exposes the subject to the truth about the precarious and interdependently connected world. As J. Gentile (2020) supposes, the spreading of novel coronavirus provokes the experience of a strange disorder of temporality, a feeling of the Real Time, similar to Winnicott's fear of breakdown with its primitive agonies.
Q. Zangrilli (2020) compares feelings caused by the COVID-19 pandemic with regression phantasmatically linked to the intrauterine stage, thereby activating archaic defense mechanisms. J. Dodds (2020) writes about "the viral uncanny" in terms of S. Freud's "uncanny" as a severe experience when something seems both strangely familiar (reminding of a repressed aspect of the subject) and frighteningly alien. The author notes that it may be produced if the borders erected between the living and the dead, human and nonhuman, are threatened, blurred, or erased (Dodds, 2020). A. Yuran (2020) believes that social psychic response to the COVID-19 with its excessive paranoid, obsessive and phobic symptomatology may refer to Freud's "Verwerfung" ("return of the rejected").
Some psychoanalysts were thinking more in line with the influence of the COVID-19 pandemic unfolding on the psychoanalytic process (e.g. Catz, Ferruta, Francesconi, Goisis, et al. 2020;Rossi, Ferro, 2020;Rowlandson, 2020;Lesley, 2020;Lippin, 2020). For instance, N. McWilliams (2020 reports her observations about a patient's belief that their psychoanalyst is an omnipotent, omniscient Other, who can fix the situation if he or she will see the patient's pain. Besides, N. McWilliams highlights the importance of accepting the realistic, non-neurotic status of patients' fears and losses in relation to the coronavirus. D. Elise (2020) considers how the COVID-19 crisis affects the libidinal vitality of the analytic couple due to the situation, which becomes an obstacle for two erotic bodies to meet in a room, in terms of de-libidinization of the analytic erotic field (Elise, 2019). S. Keggereis (2020) reflects on the challenges of working psychoanalytically when a physical level of the "good object" (in Klien's terms, 1932) -our body and, especially, immune system -is hard to trust, and when "good parents" (at least, some reliable political leaders) are absent either. Therefore, it transforms a common psychoanalytic aim to offer a good object to our patients into a challenge. Based on her own clinical observations, M. Velykodna (2021) describes her difficulties in using countertransference and tendencies to use acting out manifested as forgetting about the scheduled sessions, resistance to change setting agreements, becoming "deaf" to patients' transference, psychoanalyst's libidinal disinvestment, "loss in advance" and "the dead mother" countertransference, which were explained in terms of counter-phobic disinvestment, regression, work of denial and work of grief due to real losses, as well as the possible consequence of previous distortions of psychoanalytic stance.
Some practitioners comment on their first experience of working remotely due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the lockdown. E. Malater (2020) reports on the specifics of providing practice through the ZOOM platform, where the patient does not need to stand up from a couch, but rather needs to press the button "leave the meeting" twice, which signifies sessions as "meetings", and exposes the topic of "endings" (there is also a button for psychoanalyst "end meeting for all"). R. Rizq (2020) describes her feeling of loss and also highlights the risk to lose the loss by ignoring a number of losses associated with the impossibility to meet in person, i.e. loss of physical presence, of silence, of another type of distancing which allowed to manifest a sensitivity to otherness.
Consideration of not only partial, unique, or specific, but also general observations when practicing psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic psychotherapy during COVID-19 unfolding, as well as some possible regional aspects, may also be significant.
The objective of this paper is to present the specif- The study was conducted almost a month after the quarantine in the country had been imposed (on March 16), and aimed to assess the observed phenomena of the psychoanalytic process. The respondents were representatives of various associations, were working in different theoretical approaches, and held a range of professional statuses (i.e., candidates, certified psychoanalysts or psychoanalytic psychotherapists, training psychoanalysts, supervisors).
From April 8 to 15, 2020, the participants were asked via the Internet (announcements in social networks, through professional associations, by e-mail) to answer several questions anonymously in an online form, and were also informed that the aim of the survey was this research.
Consents for gathering personal data, participating in the study, and publishing the results were also signed via the Internet before filling in the survey form.
The following groups of questions were proposed: 1) general professional data: method or methods of practicing (psychoanalysis, psychoanalytic psychotherapy, or both); years of practical experience; membership in psychoanalytic associations; status of specialist (candidate, psychoanalyst, training psychoanalyst, supervisor); types of patients the practitioner typically works with (adults, adolescents, children, groups); 2) current professional data: whether the respondent has kept or suspended the practice during the quarantine; any increase or decrease in the number of pa- For those who mentioned that they had suspended their practice due to the quarantine were proposed some further questions regarding their reasons for suspending, and how they spent their time instead of working.
Data analysis of this study includes descriptive statistics, non-parametric comparison by χ 2 for frequencies analysis, Spearman rank one-tail and two-tail correlation using IBM SPSS Statistics software, and the dichotomic correlation coefficient φ. Multiple response analysis was used for variables with patients' description.   Table 1. 91.5% of survey participants admitted their membership in one or more psychoanalytic associations. The distribution of mentioned associations is represented in Table 2. 81.4% confirmed perceived support of colleagues during the spread of COVID-19 and quarantine throughout Ukraine.

Results
As for practicing during the quarantine, 83.1% of survey respondents noted they continued working. From this group of specialists, only 6.8% had never held any experience with remote sessions prior. 45.8% noticed they had some occasional experience, and 47.5% were highly experienced in practicing online or through the telephone. It was discovered that previous experience in working remotely had not affected attention paid to patients' feelings (χ 2 =0.71), nor to the appearance of new topics during sessions (χ 2 =0.59), transference (χ 2 =0.42), and countertransference observations (χ 2 =3.81). Interestingly, a moderate correlation was discovered between the duration of practice experience and whether practice did, in fact, continue dur-ing the quarantine (r=0.372, p<0.01). Besides, the practice was more likely to be continued in the case when the clients were adults (r=0.265, p<0.05).
55.9% said they were keeping their regular setting, including financial agreements, while 44.1% had implemented some setting changes. The distribution of decisions to keep or change the format was similar among the groups of practitioners with different professional statuses (χ 2 =3.88).
According to the content analysis of responses regarding the changes in format or setting, the implemented modifications are as follows (in order from the most to  the least frequently noted): 1. Financial re-agreements. Practitioners noted different kinds of changes in financial aspects of the setting, including delayed payment ("credit" for sessions during the quarantine), partial payment (wherein the last part will be paid after the quarantine), reduction of the regular fee, cancellation of the session pass payment rule, and bank transfers instead of cash. Many of them mentioned the financial uncertainty or losses of analyzants as the main reason for such re-agreements.
2. Conducting sessions remotely. The respondents noted that they were continuing their work online, and some of them even mentioned the way in which they were doing it (kept working as if "on the couch" by switching the video off or changed to face-to-face video format). As was mentioned above, in some cases it was a new experience for the patient, while for others it was just continuing the previous remote format.

Reduction in the number of sessions per week.
Practitioners mentioned they had changed the number of sessions per week for some analyzants, due to the latter's financial reasons or difficulties in participating in sessions remotely.

Suspension of the psychoanalytic process.
With some analyzants, the process was paused for the duration of quarantine because of the impossibility to provide confidentiality in their homes.
As stated by the 59.3% of practitioners who re- The topic "Quarantine restrictions" was devoted to discussions about the adherence to quarantine limitations and reactions to isolation, including frustration by it, ways to take care of one's self and to defend against danger, and compulsive defensive behavior.
The topic "Affective and regressive reactions" included different states and feelings that had significantly changed in the patient's opinion, i.e., aggression, disappointment, relief connected to previous guilt, feeling of loss, regressive states, narcissistic emptiness.
The topic "Origins of the pandemic" was devoted to the patient's thoughts about the pandemic, its meanings, its emergence, and included conspiracy theories.
The topic "Uncertainty and disruption of orderliness" included patients' descriptions of powerlessness, helplessness, uncertainty, and other discomforts associated with the pandemic in general, and the disruption of orderliness and the routine within their everyday lives.
The topic "Relationships" referred to the patient's discussions of conflicts with others (e.g., family members), and their consequential feelings of either closeness or loneliness manifested due to the quarantine situation.
What was not less important, were topics on individual "Financial difficulties" and "Other topics" which appeared as unique themes, e.g., gratitude to the psychoanalyst for continuing the psychoanalytic process, the freedom to think and speak, a feeling of self-transformation.
89.5% of surveyed practitioners noted that their patients experienced new or a perceivably increased level of feelings. It was very difficult to summarize or amalgamate all the diversities of feelings into some groups. Thus, we can conclude that there were feelings and states which were mentioned more frequently. Such "top-feelings" were: Anxiety (37.3%) without any particular frightening objects, additionally manifested in some cases through panic attacks; Feeling of "being castrated" (18.6%), i.e., powerlessness, helplessness, disorientation, insecurity, self-doubt; Aggression (15.3%) and anger; Hope-hopelessness (13.6%) as a continuum of feelings.
About a half (48.3%) of respondents observed some changes in the transference of their patients. Interestingly, part of them noted they had difficulties in describing and explaining the changes they felt. Among transferential observations, 4 points were the most common: Regression and search for the strong Other: analyzants and patients demand or provoke the psychoanalyst to be someone who can protect them, give answers, take responsibility, and prove to have a strong personality. In some cases, this need for the strong, omnipotent Other inclines patients to moderate their previous negative transference, and to become more careful with the analyst.
Anxiety: patients manifest their general anxieties or anxieties associated with previous traumatic experience in the transferential relationships, e.g., wanting to see the psychoanalyst's eyes, being worried about the safety and security of the new analytic situation, etc.
Intensiveness of transference: previously developed transference becomes more intensive and perceived.
Negative feelings: dissatisfaction associated with the pandemic and/or the quarantine allowed patients to express reproach and resentment towards the psychoanalyst as a weak, unreliable, and betraying object.
Interestingly, a significant difference was found in transference interpretation due to certification status: practitioners who had not yet been certified (i.e., candidates or psychoanalytic consultants under supervision), tended to notice changes in the patient's transference more frequently than certified psychoanalysts and psychoanalytic psychotherapists (χ 2 =8.21, p<0.01).
Countertransference. 45.8% of practicing survey participants noticed some changes in their countertransfer-ence, which were then separated into three main groups ( Figure 2 As for practice, it was reported that the demand for psychoanalytic support had grown, however people often could not afford it. There were noted observed difficulties for some patients who had previously used compulsive activity and personal distancing to avoid facing some inner and intersubjective processes; now they suffered because of the "immobility" initiated by the quarantine and the necessity to be with other people (e.g., their children) nearby.
There were also some patients with usual anxieties who did not, in fact, feel any anxiety in the context of the pandemic.
An additional topic was related to the significance of changes in the setting, including financial agreements, in order to support a connection to reality and save the analytic process where possible.
As for practitioners themselves, sensorial deprivation and loss of control over the space (room, conditions) during remote sessions were mentioned as difficult to bear.
One respondent noted some perceivable changes in her defenses: shift to isolation of affect and using physical training to cope with her own anxiety. Another specialist wrote about the feeling of being united with friends and relatives, i.e., the relationships had become closer and warmer. A group analyst, after four sessions conducted online, concluded that online group analysis is indeed possible.
In accordance with survey responses, 15.5% of the specialists interrupted their practice due to the quarantine. Among the reasons, they listed: patients' decisions, partially due to the lack of possibility to participate in sessions online or to pay for them because of financial losses; practitioner's convictions against remote practice (sometimes only with certain patients); limitations to conduct psychoanalytic sessions, e.g., due to issues of keeping confidentiality while working from home, and the impossibility of remote work with patients who are children.
These respondents noted they were spending this time having a rest, being with their families, reading, learning, educating and supervising others, caring for their own health. One respondent in particular admitted that she had started to work online in her previous specialization. First of all, the majority of studied specialists did, in fact, continue their practice (83.1%) under the new conditions. As we have described earlier, a moderate correlation was found between the duration of practice experience and the fact that practice continued during the quarantine.

Discussion
We can interpret this in two possible ways. The first is about the number of analyzants or patients in current practice, which may differ between more or less experienced practitioners. Those who have worked longer may have enough patients to continue their practice even if a few of them had suspended their work. Those who have worked less may normally have just a few patients, and therefore the quarantine could pose a risk to lose them -at least temporarily. However, it is impossible to verify this hypothesis within the scope of the current study. The second is about the amount of professional experience in dealing with the patients' intentions to suspend or interrupt psychoanalysis belt may be more experienced in detecting some patients' resistance or acting out masked in "unavoidable hindrances to continue analysis", and therefore in working it through.
The same could be stated about psychoanalyst's own resistance to continue working with damaged inner balance between destructiveness and love due to persecutory reality of pandemic (Kegerreis, 2020), with de-libidinized and devitalized analytic erotic field due to impossibility to conduct sessions in person (Elise, 2020), with obsessive topic of death, masked in the topic of «endings» (Malater, 2020), sharing the unforeseen crisis for both the patient and the psychoanalyst (Bronstein, 2020), as well as facing psychoanalyst' own regression, castration and difficulties in investing psychically in their patients (Velykodna, 2021).
Thus, more seasoned practitioners may be more prepared to work through or to bear their own negative and depressive feelings in order to continue working psychoanalytically.
For instance, using good-humored grace and accepting psychoanalyst's dispositional shift to be more facilitative to some treatments (Aibel, 2020).
Besides, a weak tendency was discovered wherein the practice was more likely to be continued in case of the clients being adults. We suppose it may be connected with (a) the objective difficulties in organizing and providing remote sessions for children, adolescents, and groups, and (b) the fact that work with all the just-listed patients in-volves other people (i.e., parents, group members), thereby includes the others' resistance and acting out which would be harder to consider and to work through.
In the practicing group of respondents, as is shown in is connected not with the duration of working experience, but rather the certification status. Therefore, we must consider increasing attentiveness in relation to the discovery of the transferential side of the psychoanalytic process as well as enhanced readiness to focus on it, which may be distinctive to candidates during their certification process. Possi- which is evident if we compare the results of the contentanalysis in these categories (see Table 4), also highlights this possible link between the described observations. Perhaps the practitioners with different levels of experience or certification status were talking about some similar processes, feelings, and states, but with varying emphasis regarding its interpretation and explanation as being more transferential or countertransferential.
As we can see from Table 4, while patients experience an urgent need in some regressive dynamics near a strong and protective Other, psychoanalysts observe their intentions to become more supportive and caring. Besides, both share some perceivable intense feelings in their transference-countertransference links. Similarly, we may suppose that patients' increased negative feelings and anxieties are related to the observed fatigueness and heaviness which practitioners did feel.
Another interesting fact was that the observed changes in countertransference were moderately correlated with the observed new topics from patients during sessions.
However, based on this result, we cannot be sure which variety may be posed as the reason for the second variety, i.e., whether the attentiveness to the psychoanalyst's own countertransference and confirmation of changes in it makes the practitioner more attentive to changes in patient's topics, or the patient, talking more about the pandemic or the quarantine, evokes new or increased feelings and wishes in the psychoanalyst. Nevertheless, the observed shifts in countertransference experience and usage seem close to the noticed ones by other practitioners (Aibel, 2020;Rizq, 2020;Velykodna, 2021).
Surprisingly, a correlation was also discovered between the observed changes in countertransference and the fact that practitioners had received guidance from their association on how to practice during the pandemic and the quarantine. This puzzling result raises a question which is not possible to answer within in the current scope of the study: whether such a correlation is connected with some direct guidelines for association members to track their own countertransference dynamics, with associations' admitting that the COVID-19 pandemic and quarantine are new extraordinary situations, and therefore, causing these practitioners to be more likely to accept their own new feelings instead of work of denial, etc. These are just several of the dozens of possible reasons.
At first sight, it seemed trivial to discover that practitioners who had guidance from associations about the practice during the pandemic were overall more likely to feel support from colleagues. However, the perceived support from colleagues was a more common response from those who practiced psychoanalytic psychotherapy than from those who practiced psychoanalysis, although the distribution of support from associations in the form of guidelines was similar for practitioners of both methods. Do psychoanalytic psychotherapists build warmer and more supportive Table 4 The main changes in transference and countertransference during the COVID-19 pandemic and quarantine: results of content-analysis

Transference Countertransference
Regression and search for the strong Other, who is able to protect, give answers, take responsibility Changes in psychoanalytic stance to more supportive, maternal, caring, advicegiving

Intensiveness Intensiveness
Anxiety Fatigue and feeling of heaviness Increased negative feelings to the psychoanalyst as a weak, unreliable and betraying object These questions are also beyond the scope of this study.
Nevertheless, it seems important to study the current needs and vulnerabilities of psychoanalysts to build more supportive and trustable professional relationships, as M. A. Ellis (2020) recently emphasized.
One more interesting result was discovered regarding practicing remotely, wherein experience or inexperience did not affect psychoanalytical practitioners' ability to observe new topics, feelings, and transferential dynamics of patients, as well as their own countertransference. It may then prove the idea that psychoanalysis or psychoanalytic function in particular is more independent from the situation of meeting in person or online than we previously supposed.

Conclusions. The current unavoidable COVID-19
situation may affect psychoanalytic practice -at least in its setting and format -which has always been understood as a significant frame, and even as "the third", of psychoanaly- Almost half of the psychoanalysts and psychotherapists implemented some setting or format changes due to the COVID-19 unfolding. These were predominantly financial re-agreements, including the reduction or long delay of payment, shifting to the remote format of sessions, and a reduction in the number of sessions per week; however with some analyzants, the process was suspended due to the quarantine restrictions.
Those who continued practicing noted rather unanimously that their patients had experienced new intense feelings in particular those of fear, anxiety, being "castrated", aggression and anger, along with hope and hopelessnessalthough the variety of feelings was, in fact, extensive and included even relief and freedom. About a half of the respondents mentioned some changes in transference and countertransference, which we found complementary during the studied period, that was also associated with the duration of practical experience, certification status, guidelines from psychoanalytic associations, and patients' readiness to speak on pandemic-related or quarantine-related topics. While the majority of respondents confirmed perceived support from colleagues, it was chiefly dependent on associations' attentiveness and, surprisingly, the main method.
The heterogeneity of the obtained observations regarding most survey categories (i.e., setting, topics at the sessions, transference, and countertransference), with distribution close to half-to-half, not only shows the current significant role of every particular psychoanalyst who deals with the developing COVID-19 in their own way (as well as his or her therapeutic flexibility; Bugliani, 2020), but also raises the question of a possible splitting in the psychoanalytic community, reflecting the unconscious response from the population towards the viral danger (Johanssen, 2020).
Limitations. This study has certain limitations, which we associate with the size and specifics of the sample. There is some imparity in the gender distribution of the surveyed psychoanalysts (78,9% females, 19,7% males).
Besides, the sample size may be somewhat smaller than expected samples for nationwide surveys for psycho- The results of the Ukrainian psychoanalysts' and psychoanalytic psychotherapists' survey have shown that the majority of respondents tried to continue their practice in new pandemic conditions, which was more successful with the more experienced (in years) practitioners. However, 1/6 of the respondents had to suspend their practice due to the quarantine.
Almost half of the psychoanalysts and psychotherapists implemented some setting or format changes due to the COVID-19 unfolding. These were predominantly financial re-agreements, including the reduction or long delay of payment, shifting to the remote format of sessions, and a reduction in the number of sessions per week; however with some analyzants, the process was suspended due to the quarantine restrictions.
Those who continued practicing noted rather unanimously that their patients had experienced new intense feelings in particular those of fear, anxiety, being "castrated", aggression and anger, along with hope and hopelessness -although the variety of feelings was, in fact, extensive and included even relief and freedom. About a half of the respondents mentioned some changes in transference and countertransference, which we found complementary during the studied period, that was also associated with the duration of practical experience, certification status, guidelines from psychoanalytic associations, and patients' readiness to speak on pandemic-related or quarantine -related topics. While the majority of respondents confirmed perceived support from colleagues, they were chiefly dependent on associations' attentiveness and, surprisingly, the main method.
The heterogeneity of the obtained observations regarding most survey categories (i.e., setting, topics at the sessions, transference, and countertransference), with distribution close to half-to-half, not only shows the current significant role of every particular psychoanalyst who deals with the developing COVID-19 in their own way, but also raises the question of a possible splitting in the psychoanalytic community, reflecting the unconscious response from the population towards the viral danger.