Reconsiderations on Online Psychoanalysis

by Silvestro Lo Cascio

Key Words: Online psychoanalysis – E-therapy – skype-therapy – setting – online psychotherapy

Abstract: this work explores, without any theoretical prejudice, the use of new information technologies within the analytical setting. An examination is carried out on the strengths and weaknesses that the use of these tools could bring to the therapeutic relationship. The effects that could fall on the setting, on the transference and on the interpretation are looked at with critical lenses. Furthermore, in order to clear the field of risky confusion of languages, the distinction between “analysis” intended as standard psychoanalytic treatment, and psychoanalytic therapeutic intervention, instead characterized by a character of brevity, is underlined. The session via skype can be understood then, not as a psychoanalysis, but as a psychoanalytic therapeutic intervention, where according to certain circumstances, such as a temporary transfer of the patient, a hospital stay, or as in the most recent case of a pandemic, online psychoanalysis would contribute to the opportunity for the patient to start again.