Clinical Issues in Tele-Analysis: Cyber-Intimacy

Lee, Chang Hun

Abstract

Hyper-connectivity and despatialization that represent current society ask us to accept and apply tele-analysis to the field of psychoanalytic psychotherapy and psychoanalysis. Psychoanalysis has preserved values of ambiguity, discomfort and time consuming tasks which, even though modern people devalue their values, is necessary to have empathy, internalize representations of each other, and establish internal intimacy. Tele-analysis, however, has contrary aspects to values which psychoanalysis has preserved. It is why many researchers have continued to the debate about advantages and disadvantages of tele-analysis. I will discuss the possibility of clinical use and predicted clinical problems of tele-analysis through reviewing recent studies and literature and my clinical experiences about tele-analysis. I like to empower therapists to overcome prejudice about the usefulness of tele-analysis, and clearly recognize its clinical problems. It will lead us to prepare for the era of Internet which must apply to psychoanalytic psychotherapy and psychoanalysis and make the value and the possibility of psychoanalysis more widely understood and accepted.