TMI in the transference LOL: Psychoanalytic reflections on Google, social networking, and ‘virtual impingement’

Balick, Aaron

doi:10.1057/pcs.2012.19

Cited by 13 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 11 publications

(9 reference statements)

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“…It is unsurprising, then, that most therapists find social media to be intrusive and threatening to their clinical practice (Balick, ). Although posting information online is, for the most part, volitional, its accessibility to the public eye (including potential and current patients) can be difficult to control.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Social Media and its Impact on Therapeutic Relationships

Kaluzeviciute¹

2020

Brit J Psychotherapy

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In the current age of social media, the boundaries between the online and the offline, the personal and the professional, have become blurred and ambiguous. This poses significant challenges to the practice of psychoanalysis, which for a long time has been thought of as a technologyfree and private space. This paper compares how social media impacts therapeutic relationships in the broader field of psychotherapy and in psychoanalytic psychotherapy in particular. Direct breaches in therapist privacy were found to be more frequent with non-psychoanalytic psychotherapists due to therapists' higher online presence. Psychoanalytic psychotherapists, on the other hand, generally have a lesser online presence because of different views on therapeutic anonymity from other clinical orientations. The author suggests that this leads to different forms of virtual impingements: due to the absence of psychoanalytic therapists' online presence, patients seek to re-create therapists (and, by extension, therapeutic situations) on a virtual level rather than discover something that was already 'put out there' by therapists. Virtual manifestations of anonymity, splitting, and solipsistic introjection processes are discussed with reference to John Suler's concept of the online disinhibition effect. Further recommendations for research on social media impact are discussed.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Social Media and its Impact on Therapeutic Relationships

Kaluzeviciute¹

2020

Brit J Psychotherapy

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“…It is an arena for attachment dynamics to play out (Trub, 2016). It is tied up in activities (e.g., social networking) that elicit the desire to be sought and also to seek (Balick, 2012). When a therapist picks up the phone to schedule with a patient during the treatment hour, she cannot prevent herself from reacting to the notifications she sees.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The use of devices to get closer illustrates some positive implications of people’s attachment to devices—as alluded to by Balick (2012) likening of the phone to the mother’s breast and Ribak (2009) to the umbilical cord. The email was particularly embraced by some therapists as a vehicle for expanding the boundaries of treatment by inviting the patient to reach out between sessions while in certain states of need, which may not be accessible to the patient during a session.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The phone in the room: How technology is reshaping analytic space.

Trub¹,

Magaldi²

2022

Psychoanalytic Psychology

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The omnipresence of digital technology has changed analytic work in myriad ways. Literature on the integration of technology and psychoanalytic psychotherapy has focused mainly on remote treatment, with a small but growing interest in the impact of digital technologies on the treatment relationship. This study aims to expand and deepen our understanding of how psychoanalytic clinicians are utilizing and relating to technology in therapy. Interviews with 28 psychoanalytic clinicians illustrated various ways that digital devices impact psychotherapy both inside and outside of the treatment hour. Analysis followed a groundedtheory methodology, which was chosen for its rigorous constructivist approach that allows for deep investigation of both manifest and latent content. Findings suggested that devices hold a powerful presence in psychotherapy sessions, whether they are used to keep the therapist at a distance or to expand the therapist's ability to directly observe and bear witness to patients' lives. Devices offered a transitional space for clinicians to communicate with, contain, and hold their patients between sessions. At the same time, the nature of attachment to devices is a fertile ground for enactments in the treatment relationship. Implications related to changes in the psychoanalytic frame and therapeutic boundaries are discussed.

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“…These boys dehumanize what they see in order to disown their experiences of arousal, desire and masturbation. Balick () cites a case when internet use seems intrusive and persecutory to the therapeutic frame. At a time when the use of search engines such as Google (™) has become a handy way to pre‐empt first impressions, the internet provides information that would have been difficult to obtain 20 years ago.…”

Section: Image Boards and ‘Dark Zones’mentioning

confidence: 99%

Lost in (cyber)space: finding two adolescent boys hiding from their own humanity

Tyminski¹

2015

J Analytical Psychology

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This article explores the intense psychological effects of compulsive Internet use, which has become increasingly common among adolescent boys and young men. Two cases are presented and discussed to illustrate some of the psychic distortions around thinking and feeling, as these occurred in the analysis of a mid-adolescent boy and of another patient in later adolescence. A kind of narcissistic omnipotence grounded in magical thinking appeared to take root in their minds, and it led to an avoidant pattern in relationships because of such strong wishes for both distance and control. A short review of the conceptual origins of magical thinking underscores its continued relevance because so many now engage with the Internet. In addition, Anzieu's idea of the 'skin ego' is applied to the clinical case material to provide a theoretical framework for the developmental challenges that can appear in adolescent boys who seek to use the Internet as a form of psychic container. Emerging problems that immersion in the Internet might bring into our practices, for example the depleting effects of massive projective identification, are considered and discussed, along with the obvious ways in which using the Internet can be beneficial for connecting with others, for creating new platforms of expression, and for education.

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TMI in the transference LOL: Psychoanalytic reflections on Google, social networking, and ‘virtual impingement’

Cited by 13 publications

References 11 publications

Social Media and its Impact on Therapeutic Relationships

Social Media and its Impact on Therapeutic Relationships

The phone in the room: How technology is reshaping analytic space.

Lost in (cyber)space: finding two adolescent boys hiding from their own humanity

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