The quarantine experience set off by the COVID-19 pandemic, seen from a phenomenological perspective

Abstract

The pandemic caused by the COVID-19 virus has imposed changes to daily life in every social sphere. The ways in which we interact with each other have had to be reviewed, questioned, and readapted. The term “catastrophe” seems to be adequate to define this historical event, given the drastic, tragic changes experienced in every sphere of society, and particularly evident in daily events and interpersonal relationships. In defining the daily changes brought about by the quarantine situation as a catastrophic situation, we will focus on the shocks to be undergone by the structures of consciousness in their intention toward the world and, from a protentive possibility, their reconstruction after the crisis. For this analysis, the article has been split into five parts: definition of the concept of limit situation, as per Jaspers, with subsequent analysis of two limit situations experienced by individuals in quarantine; suspension of values and correlation between the temporal experience lived during this period and the concept of expectation, as per Minkowski; analysis of this experience, drawing on Blankenburg’s description of “loss of natural evidence”; possibilities of psychic reaction to this catastrophic event; and, finally, how phenomenological therapy can help individuals affected by this situation.

Facing the Unknown: An Inductive Analysis of the Lived Experience of Medical Residents during the COVID-19 Pandemic

“…The experience of these limit situations has a revealing and dialectical nature: revealing in both the (a) disruption of everydayness, which eventually makes plain the phenomenal constitution of the housing that is employed and destabilized, and (b) conscious experience of this situation, in which individuals become aware of, and reflect upon, their own existence. This experience is also dialectical in so far as it enables, based on existential suffering, a "leap to freedom" in structures competent to deal with the limit situation [13,35]. Indeed, it is precisely because human existence is essentially dialectical that it can mature and transform across its biographical trajectory [36].…”

“…In this respect, the participants have overcome adversity and found support in alternative existential possibilities available under those circumstances, such as interpersonal relations (see examples in Fabiana's, Eliana's, and Ursula's accounts [Results IIIc 2]). Therefore, against possible destabilizations of consciousness, an important tool is intersubjectivity, which acts as a stabilizer of the psychic structure [35].…”