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Virtual Therapy: 9 New Lessons for Patients and Therapists
What can we learn from therapy’s sudden pivot to teletherapy?
There is a war being waged over whether the human relationship will remain central to therapy (that battle is well-articulated by psychologist Todd Essig). Virtual therapy is a potential step toward dehumanization. There is no argument-physical co-presence and all that goes along with it, subtle visual cues, scents, chemistry-just isn’t the same as an image or a voice on the line.
We can imagine high-tech VR therapy, hyperreal, augmented, and transcending physicality. Why not jack into the brain and conjure something more-than-but today’s technology is a dim forerunner of that science-fiction reality.
Pragmatically, teletherapy is useful, was arriving regardless, and, courtesy of coronavirus, is now suddenly here. As the potential for distress from COVID-19 increases, the effect of isolation, failure of trust in authority, as-yet-unrealized consequences, the sense of fear from vulnerability-in spite of resilience, people need support and therapy.
With this in mind, as a practicing therapist and co-founder of Neighborhood Psychiatry, where our staff has quickly shifted to telepsychiatry, here are observations about teletherapy from both decades of practice as well as…
