Viral invasion, infection anxiety, illness, and death returning to the contemporary world–HIV/AIDS has been an intensely charged crisis in sexuality, medical awareness, and our relationship to sickness and death for forty years, and continues to be an ongoing disaster in many parts of the world. I will approach AIDS as a series of dense cultural complexes, all combining ancient roots with modern patterns, some of which have reappeared in the COVID pandemic. The archetypal narrative of the experience of HIV/AIDS as it exists in the ego, in the imagination, in the body, and in politics, links the unapproachable intensity of early death tied to physical passion. The passionate body is a generating focus – the body that desires, that is erotic – which is also the body that wants to live, that battles and demonstrates and engages with contagion, rot, and disintegration.
Learning Objectives
-
Describe the mental health impact on those diagnosed with HIV/AIDS.
-
Give an example of a cultural complex associated with illness, infection, and sexuality.
-
Distinguish between complexes related to HIV/AIDS and those related to COVID.
-
Identify transference and countertransference in relation to the fear of death, existential anxieties, and individuation.
