What is central to the analytic endeavor and the frame it creates? What can we shift, or even eliminate, without undermining what is core to analytic work? Before the pandemic, there was a widely held conviction among psychoanalysts that being two bodies in close proximity was essential to the analytic encounter. While most of us gradually incorporated digital technology into our work in various ways, we were reticent to adopt screens as an equivalent alternative to in-person therapy. The pandemic changed all of that overnight. Now, three years later, some are back at the office, many continue to work remotely and some never plan to return. What unconscious forces are at play in these decisions? When might using zoom be a delinquency and when is it simply a professional choice? This webinar will invite the audience to consider these questions and grapple with the meanings and implications of our actions today on psychoanalysis of tomorrow. (Webinars are structured, listserv-based discussions which take place via email.)

Presenter:

Leora Trub, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor at Pace University’s doctoral program in School/Clinical-Child Psychology and a practicing clinical psychologist. Her research and writing focus on the ways that digital technology influences how people relate to themselves and others, including in psychotherapy and psychoanalysis. In 2023, she founded Academics for the Advancement of Psychodynamic Psychology, which is committed to reversing the sharp decline of psychoanalytic thinking in academic psychology programs.

Moderators:

Matt Aibel, LCSW Faculty/Supervisor at National Institute for the Psychotherapies (NIP), Adelphi University’s Derner School of Psychology, Institute for Relational Psychoanalysis of Philadelphia, and Russian Relational Study Group. Submissions Editor, Psychoanalytic Perspectives; Editor, IARPP Bulletin; Board Member, IARPP. His writing has appeared in Contemporary Psychoanalysis, Psychoanalytic Inquiry, Psychoanalytic Perspectives, Attachment, and Inhabiting Implication in Racial Oppression and Relational Psychoanalysis (Routledge, 2022). Matt practices in Manhattan and remotely.

John Skrovan is a clinical psychologist practicing in Ithaca NY.