The phone in the room: How technology is reshaping analytic space.

Abstract

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.

The therapist's evolving public self in a digitally disrupted marketplace.

“…Findings produced a huge amount of data that was too unwieldy to introduce to the field in a single manuscript. In order to make a useful contribution based on the findings, multiple manuscripts were developed in the areas of online searching, the interaction between digital norms and therapeutic ones, and the impact of digital technology on the clinical process (see Trub & Magaldi, 2021, 2022; Trub et al, 2022).…”