The Orpheus' and Eurydice's Myth as a Decoding Grid for the Psychic Damages Caused by Losses Incurred by the COVID-19 Epidemic

This work aims to offer a guideline for treating losses from the COVID-19 pandemic. Psychoanalysis has proven to provide multiple levels of interpretation of both dreams and clinical material, as well as myths, which, for this reason, can also act as an interpretative grid of many current clinical situations, being paradigmatic of human dramas, conquests and tragedies. However, the classical psychoanalytic approach has often used stereotypes that have led to prefabricated and caricatural interpretations, leading to the loss of the richness of suggestions that myths can give to clinical interventions. The Orpheus’ and Eurydice’s myth, being descriptive of the loss of the object of love, which is the most devastating and destructive of losses, can prove helpful in framing the clinical paths to be faced in repairing the damage suffered and in resuming the lost opportunities of development, due to the restrictions imposed by the containment measures of the covid-19 pandemic. The present work presents semiological and psychoanalytic integrated approaches to interpret this myth, proposing itself as an intervention grid for the treatment of losses suffered during the COVID-19 pandemic, also able to overcome some of the difficulties inherent in other approaches. In particular, "Orpheus' error" presents some suggestions for adopting the clinical approach, which has found support in longitudinal research carried out in the field with a different methodology.