THE ANALYST IN THE INTENSIVE CARE UNIT: A RETURN TO FREUD

The Intensive Care Unit (ICU) is the place in a hospital which caries in its name the idea of death. Thus, when someone enters the ICU, this person can die, even though, as a paradox, this is the place where there is always a battle for life. Eros and Thanatus live in the same house and, in the presence of organic emergency, the psychic one appears and it is in this context that the psychoanalyst’s work must be done. However, the psychoanalyst who works in an ICU should be ready to deal with the particularities of this context and act on the basis of A return to Freud so as new discourses and new possibilities can appear. Moreover, thepsychoanalyst should also be aware of the concept of the so called applied psychoanalysis and of its close relation to pure one. This is, probably, the only way an analyst has to find hisplace in this institutional scene.