Psychoanalysis via telephone is becoming increasingly prevalent while remaining an area of comparatively little study. The author's early telephone treatment of a series of patients living some distance away or engaged in business travel, and his subsequent telephone treatment of nine analytic and five psychotherapy patients following his own geographic move, are discussed in detail. The mechanics of beginning and carrying out such treatment are examined. The theoretical implications of the shift to the telephone and the ambivalence with which it is often met by clinicians are also explored. The role of nonverbal communication in both in-person and telephone analysis is considered, as is the concept of the analytic office as a literal space and a psychological container. Suggestions for future research are advanced.
Postmodernism has appeared on the psychoanalytic horizon and with it brought change and some confusion. Although many link or even conflate it with relational and intersubjectivity theory, those views are as subject to a postmodernist critique as other analytic orientations. Postmodernism can also be seen as usefully informing the concepts of psychoanalytic narrative and psychoanalytic space. It should not be viewed as an organized theory or movement that would entirely replace modernist ideas in psychoanalysis. Indeed, valid critiques of both modern and postmodern psychoanalytic positions have been advanced. In this climate the need for a viable integration remains urgent. Bruno Latour's development of the concept of hybrid structure as a way of dealing with the same kind of impasse in the field of science studies is presented, along with its applicability to the dilemma faced by psychoanalysis.
This article explores the heterogeneity of postmodern thought and its contributions to contemporary psychoanalytic theory and practice; the heterogeneity of psychoanalytic theory and the claims of privilege and standing made by individual theories; and the postmodern terrain and its conflicting points of view. Its origins are also traced back to the work of classical analytic authors, notably Erikson, Gill, Hartmann, Klein, and Rapaport. A solution to the problem of theoretical plurality is suggested, addressing its ontological and epistemological roots.
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