Psychotherapy in the time of COVID‐19 (psychotherapy changes shape and steps forward)

Abstract

In this article, I articulate the challenges and reshaping that the global pandemic has brought to the practice and ethics of a relational transactional analysis psychotherapy. I describe the interweave of political, social and psychosocial contexts which have led to life‐threatening emergencies within a society in which inequalities are endemic; and link the impact of these contexts to a relational transactional analysis practice using, as a compass, features of classical transactional analysis, radical psychiatry and feminist thought. I outline an approach to the work which accounts for the life‐changing impact of the pandemic, which I call ‘the COVID Third’. Speaking from the experience of COVID‐19 in the United Kingdom, I imagine, other countries will have experienced different political situations but have associated emotional personal responses which are brought to psychotherapy.

Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis of Therapists’ Experience of Working Through the COVID-19 Global Emergency using Transactional Analysis

“…To date, transactional analysis (TA) literature related to COVID-19 has focused on describing these as well as other shifting cultural paradigms. Shadbolt (2020) writes passionately of the interconnectedness of politics, society and mental health and introduces the concept of the 'COVID Third' which "accounts for the life-changing impact of the pandemic" (p.1). Whilst opinion-led, rather than research based, her paper serves to both historically contextualise and encapsulate the zeitgeist in portraying the changed nature of the client-therapist relationship during this period and encourages practitioners to "acknowledge, accept and face the shared vulnerability without losing the self-agency of the therapeutic relationship…" (p.10).…”

“…As Shadbolt (2020), identifies, the huge personal human cost of COVID and societal inequalities were brought into sharp focus at this time. Considered within the realm of radical psychiatry (Steiner, 1975) and second wave feminism the slogan 'the personal is political' became a lived phenomenological reality reported by the participants of this study.…”