Hannah Zeavin in Continuum Innovation
The editor Ken Gordon in Continuum Innovation reviews Hannah Zeavin's book 'The Distance Cure: A History of Teletherapy'， commenting that Zeavin's work will help both therapists and their patients move forward in our blended century. People are, she says, “in and out of their offices, and they're really looking for some guidance as to how to do that. It really changes almost everything about therapy.”
In her definition, "teletherapy" is a concept that “those therapies facilitated by a class of techniques and tools that allow patients to communicate with clinicians or volunteers or machines, not in their physical proximity at the time of communication.” Zeavin and Gordon probe the ways in which teletherapy has threatened the expertise of therapists and empowered patients, experimented with artificial intelligence, raised issues of privacy and confidentiality, given the vulnerable more access and made them vulnerable, and changed the participants in and business model of therapy. They talk of Winnicott, Freudmania, the anxiety of mediation, Shakespeare, Harold Bloom, even Fran Lebowitz!
As quoted from Ken Gordon's review:
"She catalogs the various forms of teletherapy—radio broadcasts, call-in shows, e-therapy—but insists we remember that no matter what, communication is nearly impossible, whether it's two-way and synchronous or one-way and asynchronous, and that's really at the core of what people deal with in psychodynamic treatment. Zeavin notes that communication issues are, generally speaking, also what we deal with as daily habitual users of media."
To read the book review, please visit here!