Covid Trail

Contributors include Anthony Berendt, Birgitte Bonnerup, Leslie B. Brissett, Halina Brunning, Tim Dartington, Winnie Fei, M. Gerard Fromm, Zhang Jian Li, Olya Khaleelee, Andrzej Leder, Richard Morgan-Jones, Claudia Nagel, Mario Perini, Rob Stuart, Simon Western, and Barbara-Anne Wren.

The idea of The Covid Trail developed at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic. Using the language of psychoanalysis and system psychodynamic thinking, it seeks to find a way to think about and understand the post-pandemic world from an international perspective. Motivated by a desire to express what is hidden, dangerous, and difficult to express, this book takes us on a trail. It starts with disquiet, disorientation, and loss in Part I. Through attempts to make sense of it all, a clear, albeit meandering and dangerous, path to follow is created, which snakes throughout the book. Part II takes a closer look at despair and resilience and pairs them through balancing power with vulnerability. Part III delves into the realm of psychoanalysis, to seek solace, or at least a deeper understanding of the phenomenon of the pandemic, and examines how we have sown our own environmental destruction. The final part offers a glimpse into the post-Covidian world and the longer and deeper impact of Covid upon our bodies, relationships, constructs, and civilisation.

The volume ends on a trail of each chapter’s essence, taking the reader from shock, disorientation, and fear through mobilisation of resilience, a realisation of the enormity of the changes humanity faces, and an attempt to comprehend these processes as a guide to this permanent “new normal”. All those with a desire to understand the way the world has changed will want to explore The Covid Trail.

Halina Brunning is a chartered clinical psychologist, freelance organisational consultant, and accredited executive coach. She has published extensively on clinical and organisational issues, and edited several books for Karnac including Executive Coaching: Systems-Psychodynamic Perspective (2006), translated into Italian in 2009. Between 2010 and 2014 she conceived of and edited a trilogy of books, which analyses the contemporary world through a psychoanalytic lens: “Psychoanalytic Perspectives on a Turbulent World”.

Olya Khaleelee is a corporate psychologist, psychoanalytic psychotherapist, and organisational consultant with a particular interest in leadership, organisational transition, and transformation. She has been associated with the Tavistock Institute for over 30 years in developing group relations both in the UK and abroad, and was the first female director of the Leicester Conference, which explores authority, leadership and organisation from a psychoanalytic and systemic perspective. She was chairwoman of the London Centre for Psychotherapy (now part of British Psychotherapy Foundation) and for many years was director of OPUS: Organisation for Promoting the Understanding of Society, applying a psychoanalytic and systemic approach to understanding the societal processes that give rise to conflict and division. She has published extensively in the areas of leadership, including psychological assessment of senior executives and on system psychodynamics in the organisation and beyond, into society.