American Journal of Psychoanalysis最新文献

While screen-mediated analysis long predated the pandemic, it was largely seen as non-equivalent to in-person treatment by analysts and patients alike. When COVID forced us to move our entire practices to the screen, our concerns about its limitations were replaced by relief; we could continue doing analytic work during a terrifying and challenging time. Three years later, many have chosen to continue practicing remotely for reasons that are no longer driven by fears of exposure. We mostly minimize or deny our earlier concerns about the limitations of screen work. Have we chosen convenience, ease, and a personal sense of safety over togetherness, while ignoring the underbelly of remote work? This paper identifies the convergence of several forces underlying our decision to stay remote, including guilt and anxiety about privileging our own self-interest, unmourned losses and collective PTSD, fear of the future and existential anxiety about living in a techno-culture that threatens to replace us. Our denial of these powerful forces makes it easy to rationalize a decision to embrace remote work and disavow the threat it poses to our field.

The Covid pandemic changed the daily routines for millions of people. This was the case for those who were gainfully employed, especially for those who work as psychoanalysts and psychodynamic psychotherapists. At least for a good while, the practice of psychotherapy and psychoanalysis moved from the consulting room to the virtual world of the internet. The author explores the impact virtual therapy had on three different patients. One began a three time a week analysis during the pandemic. The duo met virtually for a year and a half before their first in person meeting. The other two patients had begun twice a week analyses a few years before the pandemic, met virtually for two years, until in person sessions restarted. The patients and the author describe their experiences.

The shift towards remote or online therapy was compelled by the Pandemic. Many colleagues, who neither had practice using this modality, nor had ever considered it as a possibility, ultimately adopted it. This experience brought with it a substantial expansion of online therapy beyond that moment of emergency. It opened up new prospects of intervention, but at the same time it required a greater measure of reflection in order to understand how to inhabit this new therapy space. Setting aside provisory, intermittent, or emergency situations, which temporarily transfer therapy into a "field of tents" (Bolognini, 2021), the author proposes to consider how online psychotherapy redefines an important element of the psychoanalytic setting-the issue of the space. This is no longer the therapist's place of work, envisaged and organized by him/her/them, fixed in time, and contrived only to welcome the therapeutic relationship-one of the crucial aspects of the external setting, which together with the temporal dimension, fulfills the therapy ritual. Assuming the framework to be essential to the psychoanalytic process, this paper will focus on the methodology of online therapy. The author will describe the contributions of the neurosciences, to provide a deeper understanding of the distinctive characteristics of sharing in an online vs. an offline space. Online therapy should be assessed for its distinguishing qualities within a complete theoretical, technical, and clinical reflection specific to each case. Proceeding as if it were a mere relocation of an in-person analysis would enhance the seductiveness of a therapy that is easily accessible with any laptop anywhere, anytime, and in which one could mistake an online connection for a deep connection.

This paper examines the human relationship to technology, and AI in particular, including the proposition that algorithms are the new unconscious. Key is the question of how much human ability will be duplicated and transcended by general machine intelligence. More and more people are seeking connection via social media and interaction with artificial beings. The paper examines what it means to be human and which of these traits are already or will be replicated by AI. Therapy bots already exist. It is easier to envision AI therapy guided by CBT manuals than psychoanalytic techniques. Yet, a demonstration of how AI can already perform dream analysis reaching beyond a dream's manifest content is presented. The reader is left to consider whether these findings demand a new role for psychoanalysis in supporting, sustaining, and reframing our humanity as we create technology that transcends our abilities.