Technology-Mediated Psychoanalytic Treatment During the Pandemic:
Its Impact and How We Make It Work

IARPP Webinar, July 13-26, 2020

Led by Gillian Isaacs Russell, PhD

Moderators: Micha Weiss (Israel) and Robert Benedetti (USA)

As clinicians we deeply understand the importance of providing a safe space, connection, and continuity to our patients.  And yet the spaces in which we work, the way we think about safety, and how we provide a thread of continuity have all been impacted radically during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Before the pandemic, psychoanalytic clinicians had been grappling with making informed decisions about the best ways to use technology in our clinical work, as well as to communicate that understanding to our patients. We had the leisure to examine the emerging research in neuroscience, virtual reality, human-computer interaction, and communications theory that informed our thinking.  However, forced by COVID-19 abruptly to adopt technologically-mediated treatment as the safest way to practice, clinicians have had immediately to move treatment, supervision, and classes online.  With no transition period and no choice, the move to distance treatment and training has found many of us unprepared and vulnerable.

In this webinar, Gillian Isaacs Russell (USA), author of Screen Relations:  The Limits of Computer-Mediated Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy (Karnac, 2015), will lead an online discussion of this transition.  Drawing upon Dr. Isaacs Russell’s ethnographic research about how differences between screen relations and actual presence influences clinical processes and outcomes, our conversation will explore concepts, skills, and strategies that make remote treatment work optimally.  By moving forward in our informed understanding, we will also explore the impact on the clinician of screen-mediated treatment, especially the important ways in which it is different from in-person treatment.  Finally, we will anticipate the possibilities that will occur when–once it is safe once again to meet clinically in a shared environment–we re-emerge into a very different post-pandemic world.

Gillian Isaacs Russell, PhD, is a UK-trained psychoanalyst. She is a member of the American Psychoanalytic Association, the International Psychoanalytical Association, and the British Psychoanalytic Council. Her book, Screen Relations: The Limits of Computer-Mediated Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy, was published by Karnac Books in 2015. She serves on the editorial board of the British Journal of Psychotherapy andrecently co-edited a special issue of Psychoanalytic Perspectives on psychoanalysis and technology. Dr. Russell writes, speaks and teaches internationally on technology and its impact on intimate human relationships, particularly in psychoanalytic treatment. She currently serves on the COVID-19 Advisory Team for the American Psychoanalytic Association. She practices in Boulder, Colorado.

Robert Benedetti, Ph.D. (Moderator), is a psychologist/psychoanalyst in private practice in Washington, D.C., USA.  He received his certificate in contemporary psychoanalysis from the National Training Program in Contemporary Psychoanalysis (NTP) — National Institute for the Psychotherapies (NIP) in New York.  He is Co-Director of Curriculum and a Training Committee member of the NTP.  He is a faculty member and supervisor at the Institute of Contemporary Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis (ICP+P) in Washington, D.C., teaching in both the psychotherapy and psychoanalytic training programs.  He recently became a member of the IARPP Webinar Committee.  He has served as Clinical Assistant Professor of Psychiatry, Georgetown University Medical Center, and Director of Forensics and Clinical Operations, Saint Elizabeth’s Hospital, Washington, D.C.

Micha Weiss, Ph.D. (Moderator), is a clinical psychologist in private practice in Tel- Aviv, Israel. He is a psychotherapist and supervisor and holds experiential seminars concerning ethical presence in the psychoanalytic encounter. Micha serves as member of the IARPP Web Seminar Committee.