Andrew Key Reviews The Distance Cure
Andrew Key reviews Hannah Zeavin's The Distance Cure: A History of Teletherapy (MIT Press, 2021) for The Point Mag!
From the article:
Well-researched and enormously confident with the materials at hand, The Distance Cure develops the concept of “distanced intimacy,” a term used by Zeavin to describe the specific form of human relation that is encouraged, created and maintained by therapies that take place through communication technologies, rather than in person. Distanced intimacy creates a feeling of self-protection by acknowledging the fact of distance, while also generating a feeling of intimacy that emerges through helping and being helped: it operates dialectically, Zeavin tells us: “on the one hand, it stipulates a distance it must then cross, while on the other it maintains that distance as a shield enabling safe disclosure.”
Read the full review here!