Pandemic and trauma among public school teachers: a discussion in the light of Sándor Ferenczi’s psychoanalysis

Abstract

For psychoanalyst Sandór Ferenczi, trauma results are not from a violent event in itself, but from the failure to recognize a situation suffered, in which a “strong” belies a vulnerable one. This concept can be related to the denialism and violence that occurred during the pandemic and its consequences in the school context. This research had the general objective of understanding how public-school teachers have dealt with the traumatic dimension caused by the Covid-19 pandemic. Qualitative research was carried out, in which 10 teachers who worked in elementary education in public schools in the west of Santa Catarina were interviewed. The results indicate the lack of recognition of vulnerability, or of all the effort made by teachers to ensure that the imposed schooling model occurred, and of the exhaustion that this generated. The effect produced was one of
submission, in which the teachers lost the ability to act, think, resist, therefore, to defend themselves in
front of others, which characterizes the traumatic dimension of this experience in the Ferenczian
sense. It was observed that one of the destinations for the pandemic trauma was the suffering and illness of teachers. In view of this, the expressions that were witnessed were understood as social symptoms, and not individual symptoms, which requires political actions to combat them. It is concluded that the pandemic accentuated educational inequalities and made teachers even more vulnerable, requiring institutional recognition policies and collective actions based on an ethical position of care.