Thinking Clearly During COVID-19: Thoughts on Fear, Stress, and Mental Illness
Victor Schwartz, MD (May 19, 2020)
In his classic 1918 essay, Mourning and Melancholia, Sigmund
Freud examined the difference between mourning – natural
and non-pathological process – and melancholia, what we
would now call major depression or depressive disorder.
Although the feelings of grief, sadness, and temporary
disruptions in functioning (disturbed sleep, appetite, and
concentration) experienced when we lose someone close to
us or something we highly value, look very much like clinical
depression, they arc towards return to our usual functioning.
In clinical depression or melancholia, the disturbances are of
course, more intense, prolonged. and continue to interfere
with the ability to function over a longer time (are sometimes
associated with thoughts or impulses to self-harm) and often
with depression there is no obvious loss or precipitant.
Illness or adaptive behaviors? I’ve been thinking of this
distinction recently in light of the challenges we are all facing
in managing our fear, worry, stress, isolation, and for many of
us potential and real loss as we face the COVID-19 pandemic.
There has been much written and said about the dire mental
health impact of the pandemic. The feelings are real, natural,
and sensible as well as disturbing and adaptive-similar to the
feelings we experience during mourning. And, while they may
increase our risk of exacerbations or new onset of mental
illness, we should be careful not to label these natural feelings
as themselves pathological or signs of mental illness.
Let’s consider an analogy. Imagine you are carrying a heavy
package up a hill on a hot day. As you are walking along you
may notice that you are breathing more heavily than usual,
you might be sweating, your heart is likely beating faster and
as you continue, your arms may start to ache. Is carrying this
package harming your health? At this point, it would seem
reasonable to suggest you are fine. Your body is reacting the
way it ought to in order to compensate for the load you are
carrying. Of course, if you have a history of heart problems or
are dehydrated, or if you have arthritis in your knees, carrying
this package can lead to or exacerbate a physical problem.
So, while the burdens we are all bearing right now are
disturbing and might put us at higher risk for a mental health
problem than is usual, we should not confuse our completely
typical and normal feelings with illness. At the same time, it is
sensible that we should remain alert enough for signs of a
more concerning or pathological response to our burden (ie,
severe, unrelenting anxiety and/or sadness, inability to cope
or concentrate, sleep and/or find pleasure in anything at all,
or thoughts or impulses of self-harm or harm to others).
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Transference. In addition to the importance of distinguishing
illness from typical adaptive response, there is another
valuable and relevant psychological lesson to be gleaned from
the work of Sigmund Freud. One of Freud’s core (and rather
remarkable) observations was that the people he treated in
psychoanalysis would begin to relate to the analyst in ways
and patterns that were similar to the ways they had
interacted with parents and other important figures from
their early lives. He called this phenomenon “transference.”
The idea is that we all repeat our relationship patterns, our
assumptions about people and situations; and the more
vague, ambiguous, and stressful a situation is, the more we fill
in the gaps of our understanding with old patterns. In his
Pulitzer prize winning book The Denial of Death, the social
anthropologist Ernest Becker extended Freud’s idea of
transference. He argued that we all carry the roots of our
childhood psychological development with us and central to
those childhood feelings are our inevitable feelings of fear
and helplessness that every child feels. Becker claims that
when we are faced with frightening situations, and especially
ones where we feel out of control and in which we may be in
serious danger, it is natural and nearly inevitable to wish for a
parental figure – a hero – to protect and save us. This is
dangerous because when this occurs we may suspend or
partly suspend our adult intellectual capacity to reason and
think independently. This is how propaganda works and at its
extreme how people can be brainwashed: when people fear
for their life, they will grasp onto whoever might be in a
position to keep them safe or help them-even if it is the
person who might also harm them.
Fear and uncertainty. During the pandemic crisis, people fear
for their safety and we are faced with a situation in which
there is a lot of uncertainty about what is happening-both the
exact nature of the risk and how to minimize it. This is
precisely the type of situation during which the kind of
transference-driven dependency Becker described, can
emerge. It is easy to be confused, manipulated, or taken
advantage of when we are fearful and feeling helpless.
While the current pandemic increases our risk of being
manipulated or misled, the world of social media and the
current tense and uncertain political environment amplify our
uncertainty and can leave us grasping for anything and
anyone who seems to have an answer. When we become
aware of this natural human vulnerability, we can be on guard
for people who might be trying to manipulate or take
advantage. When there is so much unknown, we should be
suspicious of anyone who claims to have too much certainty,
to have “the solution,” especially if they tell you they’ll share
it with you for the right price. At times like this, humility is
core to truthful and valuable information.
Where does this leave us? We should accept that the past
few weeks and the coming weeks will be difficult and that
difficulty will apparently continue for a while, but people are
working on science and evidence-driven responses and
strategies. We should try to continue thinking carefully and
critically about what we hear and read, we should do what we
can to make sensible decisions about our safety and health
and that of those around us, and most important, we should
do what we can to stay connected as well as we can to those
who provide us positive and real emotional support and do
what we can to relieve our distress and the distress of those
around us.
Hopefully we can all stay safe and healthy and help each
other carry this burden. We can come out of these
experiences more aware of ourselves and more sensitive and
deeply connected.

NAME: Reading Comprehension (Mental Health)

Read the accompanying text. Afterwards, in your own words, answer the questions below using complete sentences.
The minimum number of sentences is written at the end of each question.

1. What is the main question that the essay answers? (Write a question, not a statement.) (1)

2. Are our emotions during the pandemic equivalent to mental illness? Why or why not? (2)

3. How does transference affect our emotions and actions during the pandemic? (2)

4. As a future priest, what can you do to help those who struggle with their mental health during the pandemic? (2)

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 Three Ways of Defending Martial Law
Isolde D. Amante (September 21, 2019)
Had I been old enough to vote during the Martial Law
years, I probably would have voted for Ferdinand
Marcos. Life was orderly, everyone I loved was safe
and well-fed and my view of what was happening to
the country was so limited that I thought everyone
else was happy, too.
Now I am old enough to know better.
Present-day apologists for the Marcos dictatorship
tend to use three interpretations of events to try to
spin the rest of us into believing we were misled, that
when Marcos declared Martial Law 47 years ago this
weekend, he did the country a favor.
I used to seethe whenever I heard them face-to-face
or read their opinions online. Not anymore.
Now I am more realistic, more aware of the truth that
no matter what facts or historical accounts they are
presented with, they will choose the interpretation of
events that’s the most comforting to them.
The first and most common of these interpretations
goes this way: if Martial Law was so bad, have “the
yellows” (the opposing politicians) who were in power
in the 33 years since then done any better?
This used to be so ridiculous that it was almost funny.
Anyone who paid the slightest attention to Philippine
politics after Martial Law knows that before Rodrigo
Duterte won the presidency in 2016, five different
individuals—with their own agenda and their own
shortcomings—held office.
And yet this oversimplification sells.
Everything after Martial Law you could pin on “the
yellows” and thank heavens that Duterte, who is
unapologetic about how much he admires the late
Marcos, is now in power. Sa ika-uunlad ng bayan,
disiplina ang kailangan (The nation cannot grow
without discipline).
The second interpretation is anchored on the
infrastructure projects and other supposed
accomplishments of the Marcos regime.
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Look at all he built, his apologists say. The particularly
silly ones among them then say that if you thought
the Marcos years were so despicable, you shouldn’t
ride the rail system or cross the first Mandaue-Mactan
Bridge or use any other infrastructure built during his
time.
You try to be patient and point out the crippling debt
and corruption that came to light after the
dictatorship ended. You try to share what court
documents have revealed about the hundreds of
millions of taxpayer funds transferred to bogus
foundations that fed Swiss accounts Ferdinand and
Imelda Marcos held.
You try to talk about the thousands who were killed or
simply disappeared. And yet you know, even then,
that some people will just refuse to face the facts
because the violence and tragedy of Martial Law are,
for them, abstract.
As it probably was for you and your family, too.
My childhood unfolded during Martial Law and it was
blissful. In the public grade school I went to, we
received something from the government every week:
a bag of cornmeal that we toasted with sugar to make
polvoron, a big pack of powdered milk, or some
bulgur that the school’s canteen staff baked into buns
that were actually not bad when eaten warm. We
played in peace.
It was only years later that we learned about how
public institutions had been taken apart and how the
Americans had looked the other way because their
man in the Palace didn’t rock their business or military
interests. Learned about how the economy got
divided into monopolies the dictator’s cronies
controlled and how people could disappear simply
because they’d protested too loudly or dared
embarrass one of the dictator’s children.
We were safe because our lives were small and we
were quiet and represented no threat.
The third interpretation offends the most because it Marcos regime is so despised (by some, at least), it is
tends to come from some of the most educated and because the oligarchs have conspired to ruin the
privileged circles. dictator’s name.

It goes like this: Marcos had a grand design, which It’s an obvious oversimplification, but it sells. People
was to demolish the landed oligarchy who held the will believe anything for as long as they can benefit
economy in their grip. That way, a new class of from it. That, too, is part of what made Martial Law
entrepreneurial Filipinos could prosper. And if the possible.

NAME: Reading Comprehension (Martial Law)

Read the accompanying text. Afterwards, in your own words, answer the questions below using complete
sentences. The minimum number of sentences is written at the end of each question.

1. What is the main question that the essay answers? (Write a question, not a statement.) (1)

2. From the context provided by the essay, what kind of person is an “apologist”? (2)

3. Does the writer argue for or against Martial Law? Why or why not? (2)

4. What are the three reasons that apologists use to defend Martial Law? (3)

NAME: Listening Comprehension (Lying)

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Watch the accompanying video. Afterwards, in your own words, answer the questions below using complete
sentences. The minimum number of sentences is written at the end of each question.

1. What is the main question that the essay answers? (Write a question, not a statement.) (1)

2. If you were to create a title for the video, what would it be? (Your may write a phrase and not a sentence.) (1)

3. What category of lies is argued as having potential positive effects? (2)

4. In what situation would lying be a good thing, and why? Give one example from the video. (3)

5. During what incident in your life have you had to lie? Why did you do it, and do you think it was justified? (3)

NAME: Listening Comprehension (Art)

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Watch the accompanying video. Afterwards, in your own words, answer the questions below using complete
sentences. The minimum number of sentences is written at the end of each question.

1. What is the main question that the essay answers? (Write a question, not a statement.) (1)

2. If you were to create a title for the video, what would it be? (Your may write a phrase and not a sentence.) (1)

3. “A real piece of art is a window into the domain of the transcendent.” What does this mean? (2)

4. What is the role of art and artists in society? (3)

5. What is the importance of art for you personally? (3)