ADOLESCENS-ENTIS, “GROWING” AT THE TIME OF COVID-19: INDIVIDUAL AND COLLECTIVE SOCIAL RETREAT

Abstract

As it is known, in the first months of 2020, a new coronavirus, Covid-19, spread all over the world, leading to the pandemic that we are still experiencing today. The health emergency we are experiencing enters, as it is logical, also in the therapeutic room, in the experiences and stories of adolescent patients, where private and public, personal and collective intersect, influencing each other. We asked ourselves how the pandemic has affected social withdrawal, a phenomenon that has been increasing in recent years among young people. Does it still make sense today to talk about social withdrawal? What happens when the individual retreat turns into a collective retreat? Psychotherapy becomes, today even more, the space in which the adolescent can play again in a real relationship, when even the school and the normal aggregative contexts are suspended or lived at a distance. The therapeutic space offers the opportunity for a protected emotional exchange, in which to reassure oneself and take courage to face the challenges of sociality and growth