The omnipresence of digital technology has changed analytic work in myriad ways. Literature on the integration of technology and psychoanalytic psychotherapy has focused mainly on remote treatment, with a small but growing interest in the impact of digital technologies on the treatment relationship. This study aims to expand and deepen our understanding of how psychoanalytic clinicians are utilizing and relating to technology in therapy. Interviews with 28 psychoanalytic clinicians illustrated various ways that digital devices impact psychotherapy both inside and outside of the treatment hour. Analysis followed a groundedtheory methodology, which was chosen for its rigorous constructivist approach that allows for deep investigation of both manifest and latent content. Findings suggested that devices hold a powerful presence in psychotherapy sessions, whether they are used to keep the therapist at a distance or to expand the therapist's ability to directly observe and bear witness to patients' lives. Devices offered a transitional space for clinicians to communicate with, contain, and hold their patients between sessions. At the same time, the nature of attachment to devices is a fertile ground for enactments in the treatment relationship. Implications related to changes in the psychoanalytic frame and therapeutic boundaries are discussed.

In the digital age, the cultivation of a public self—both personal and professional—is increasingly common and even expected. This undermines a norm of psychotherapy, in which therapists traditionally maintain a degree of privacy that aims to protect the individualized needs of their therapeutic work. This study aimed to explore how therapists navigate the curation of public self(s) and the treatment implications that come with this shift. In-depth interviews with 28 therapists were conducted and coded according to tenets of grounded theory methodology. Findings showed that digital technology is operating as a marketplace disruptor to the field of psychotherapy, presenting unprecedented challenges to long-held norms and assumptions about therapists’ behavior. Increased pressures to network online are more transparent, and curate digital selves have resulted in significant challenges to maintaining separation between public and private selves. This has led to fundamental changes in core elements of therapy, including the process of generating referrals, the nature of self-disclosure, the therapeutic relationship, and the overall clinical process.