Joint Annual Online Conference:
Critical Psychotherapy Network (CPN) and
Southern Association for Psychotherapy and Counselling (SAFPAC)
Technology, AI Bots and Psychotherapy After Covid:
What future for psychotherapy in a digital age?
Zoom Conference
30th September 2023
9:30 am for 10:00 to 5:30 pm
Tickets available here
Critical Psychotherapy Network (CPN) and
Southern Association for Psychotherapy and Counselling (SAFPAC)
Technology, AI Bots and Psychotherapy After Covid:
What future for psychotherapy in a digital age?
Zoom Conference
30th September 2023
9:30 am for 10:00 to 5:30 pm
Tickets available here
This conference invites clinicians, theoreticians and researchers to consider:
Covid-19 has fundamentally shaken the provision of psychotherapy and psychotherapeutic counselling. It has led many clinicians to transition to a greater provision of online therapy which has been termed an Emergence of a New Paradigm (Weinberg et al 2023). Yet this is just one way in which the digital age has affected, and will affect, clinical practice. Other technological developments such as AI Bots may be fundamentally challenging our ways of being. Yet, technology is not always welcomed. For example, Heidegger (1976) considers that with technology: Everything functions and the functioning drives us further and further to more functioning, and technology tears people away and uproots them from the earth more and more.
We might therefore further consider such related question as:
In order to facilitate such explorations, the conference day will not only include time to question speakers reporting on the cutting edge of these important developments; but, there will be space where participants can explore in small groups where they are, and where they may be going, in themselves and in their therapeutic practices.
Del Loewenthal
Chair
CPN & SAFPAC
PROGRAMME
Chairs: Del Loewenthal & Julia Cayne
Afternoon Chair: Susan Tiley (Critical Psychotherapy Network, CPN)
9.30am - 10.00am: Zoom log in
10.00am - 10.05am: Welcome, Prof Del Loewenthal - Conference Chair (Critical Psychotherapy Network and Southern Association for Psychotherapy and Counselling, UK)
10:05am – 10:20am: Introduction: Technology, AI Bots and the Internet After Covid: What future for psychotherapy - Prof Del Loewenthal - Conference Chair (Critical Psychotherapy Network and Southern Association for Psychotherapy and Counselling, UK)
10:20am – 10:40am: The Shaping force of Technology in Psychotherapy - Patricia Talens (private practice & charity sector)
10:40am - 11:00am: Looking and Listening in Online Therapy - Gail Simon (The Pink Practice)
11:00am – 11:20am: Break
11:20am – 11:40am: AI, automation and psychotherapy – a proposed model for losses and gains in the automated therapeutic encounter – Dr Helen Molden (private practice)
11:40pm – 12:00pm: Virtual Reality and Screen Relations in Clinical Practice – exploring co-creation, inclusivity and exclusivity – Ronen Stilman (private practice)
12:00pm – 12:20pm: Break
12:20pm – 1:10pm: Small Groups
1:10pm – 2.00pm: Lunch
2:00pm – 2:20pm: Connecting in a Remote World: Psychotherapy & Counselling Students’ experiences of Remote Teaching and Learning – Dr Geraldine Sheedy (Munster Technological University, Ireland)
2.20pm – 2.40pm: Virtual Parent Infant Psychotherapy is Impactful and Accessible for Mothers and Babies Attending a Community Perinatal Service – Dr Adele Greaves (NHS Perinatal Mental Health Service)
2.40pm- 2:50pm: Break
2:50pm - 3:10pm: Schrödinger's Cat Goes Online: Exploring the psychopathology of digital life – Daniel Rubinstein (Central Saint Martins UAL)
3:10pm – 3:40pm: Respondent 1 - Aaron Balick (University of Essex)
3:40pm – 3:50pm: Break
3:50pm – 4:20pm: Respondent 2 - Ian Tucker (University of East London)
4:20pm – 5:00pm: Small groups
5:00pm - 5:30pm: Plenary, Presenters, respondents and all participants
5:30pm: Conference close
SPEAKER ABSTRACTS AND BIOS
Aaron Balick - What Happens to the I/Thou When It's Mediated By An It?
The future of psychotherapy under the influence of technology - and more importantly - vice versa
Drawing on the papers submitted for this conference and the Special Issue of the European Journal of Psychotherapy and Counselling, Aaron Balick will be reflecting on the ways in which technology has come to mediate the clinical situation as well as the sociopolitical context in which all human relations are increasingly mediated by technology. Framing technology as a tool, Aaron will draw on resonant themes from across the papers to critique and speculate not only on the potential direction psychotherapy may take in the future under the influence of technology, but even more importantly (to him), how the field of psychotherapy has an obligation to look beyond the clinic and become an important voice in the development of technology itself.
Aaron Balick, PhD. is a psychotherapist, speaker, consultant, and author of the seminal text The Psychodynamics of Social Networking, which brought him international recognition as an authority on the psychology of social media and technology. Drawing on more than twenty years of clinical and academic experience, Aaron is a leading voice in the public understanding of psychology and how it can be directly applied to benefit individuals, business, and society.
Adele Greaves – Virtual Parent Infant Psychotherapy is Impactful and Accessible for Mothers and Babies Attending a Community Perinatal Service
Prior to the covid-19 pandemic, Parent-Infant Psychotherapy (PIP) was routinely offered face-to-face to mothers and babies attending a UK community perinatal mental health service. The pandemic necessitated the rapid transfer of PIP to a virtual platform to continue delivery at time of increased vulnerability for mothers and babies. This service evaluation sought to evaluate this novel method of delivery, of which, the processes and outcomes were unknown. The findings demonstrated that virtual PIP (vPIP) is impactful and accessible for mothers and their babies, with statistically significant improvements found in maternal mental health and postpartum bonding. Furthermore, Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) of interviews exploring the experience and meaning for mothers and babies engaging in vPIP, illuminated the complex therapeutic processes underlying the positive clinical outcomes. In conclusion, this small-scale service evaluation demonstrated that despite the frustrations and anxieties of working online, mothers in our sample found the overall experience of vPIP to be positive, and to result in real-world differences for them and their babies.
Dr Adele Greaves is a Clinical Psychologist who trained at the Salomons Centre for Applied Psychology at Canterbury Christ Church University and qualified in 2011. She is a full member of the British Psychological Society and registered with the HCPC. Initially, Adele specialised in the treatment of complex trauma and dissociation in an NHS Secondary Care Adult Psychological Therapies service. She then moved to an NHS Specialist Perinatal Mental Health Service and completed an Infant Observation course at the Anna Freud Centre in 2022. Adele has previously published peer reviewed journal articles on, assertive outreach services, cognitive behaviour therapy (CBT), dialectical behaviour therapy (DBT) and therapeutic puppetry.
Del Loewenthal - Introduction: Technology, AI Bots and the Internet After Covid: What future for psychotherapy
See conference brief
Del Loewenthal is Emeritus Professor of Psychotherapy and Counselling at the University of Roehampton, UK and Chair of the Southern Association for Psychotherapy and Counselling (SAFPAC) and the Critical Psychotherapy Network (CPN). Del has lectured and conducted workshops in Africa, Australasia, Europe, North and South America. He is an existential–analytic psychotherapist, photographer and chartered psychologist. His books include: Handbook of Phototherapy and Therapeutic Photography (2023 Routledge); Existential Psychotherapy and Counselling after Post-Modernism (2017, Routledge); Love, Sex and Psychotherapy in a Post-Romantic Era (2020, Routledge); Critical Existential-Analytic Psychotherapy (2021Routledge). He is also founding editor of the European Journal of Psychotherapy and Counselling (Routledge) and has a private practice in England (Wimbledon and Brighton).
Helen Molden - AI, automation and psychotherapy – a proposed model for losses and gains in the automated therapeutic encounter
With artificial intelligence (AI) and automation embedded in most aspects of life from healthcare to transportation, this article conceptualizes how increasing automation will benefit or inhibit the therapeutic encounter. Five levels of a model are outlined, from human analogue to the fully autonomous virtual (AI) therapist. The levels are referenced against key elements of the therapeutic encounter known to contribute to an effective therapeutic outcome, from the working alliance, to collaborative elements, to a confidential setting. Losses and gains are discussed through these and other aspects, such as the neurobiological, and the capability to notice what isn’t there in the process as well as what is, around the client’s aim of change or awareness. The objective is not to pit human therapist against non-human system, but to propose a human-centred framework for the integration of AI into clinical reality, by introducing a taxonomy model of human machine interaction (HMI), to see how each contributes, and to evaluate areas of risk and harm. Questions are raised around ethics, therapeutic process, and crucially the very nature of what it is to be in a therapeutic encounter for human client together with human or AI therapist.
Dr Helen Molden, DCPsych is an integrative psychotherapist and counselling psychologist with over twenty years working in the NHS, charity and private sectors, specializing in supporting people living with chronic health conditions. She currently works in independent practice, with organizations and individuals, as a clinician and researcher.
Daniel Rubinstein - Schrödinger's Cat Goes Online: Exploring the psychopathology of digital life
COVID-19 forced therapists to embrace online sessions, creating a sudden shift in the therapeutic environment. However, the integration of technology into therapy was already underway, prompting the need to explore how the online environment the therapeutic process. Drawing upon Heidegger's philosophy of technology and Whitehead’s process philosophy, this article argues that our environment and technologies shape our consciousness and subjectivity, and that both the therapist and the client are partly a product of the media ecologies of the digital age. This paper explores the concept of transitionality as proposed by Winnicott, which refers to the dynamic process through which individuals navigate between inner subjective experiences and external reality. It also examines Deleuze and Guattari's notion of faciality and the social construction of subjectivity through the screen/face as a territorializing force. By integrating these theoretical perspectives, this study seeks to shed light on the intricate relationship between individual subjectivity and online environments in shaping our experiences and identities on the screen. Overall, the article raises some questions about the use of technology in therapy and the implications for understanding the human psyche. It highlights the need to approach online therapy with awareness of the potential limitations and disturbances that may arise.
Daniel Rubinstein is a psychotherapist in private practice, he is also a Reader in Philosophy and the Image in Central Saint Martins, London and Associate Professor at School of Business, Department of Business, Strategy and Political Sciences, University of South-Eastern Norway
Geraldine Sheedy - Connecting in a Remote World: Psychotherapy & Counselling Students’ experiences of Remote Teaching and Learning
In 2017 Scholl et al. highlighted a growing trend towards online courses in Psychotherapy & Counselling training. With the emergence of the Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, this growth has accelerated, with more training now taking place in an online setting (Helmcamp & Fox 2022, Lee et al 2022, Smith, 2022). This study explored students’ experiences of remote learning on a Psychotherapy & Counselling training, with a particular focus on engagement and interaction in an online setting. A Thematic Analysis was carried out on the data and the central organising theme of Connection emerged. Three sub-themes were identified including, ‘Connection to Self’, ‘Connection to Others’ and ‘Connection to Lecturers’. Findings indicate that connection can be nurtured online through intentional instruction. Findings also suggest that students miss the personal connections that face-to-face teaching affords with a preference for a blended approach to learning. The results are used to make specific recommendations for Counselling & Psychotherapy educators.
Dr Geraldine Sheedy is a Counselling Psychologist and Psychotherapist registered with the Psychological Society of Ireland and accredited with the Irish Association for Counselling & Psychotherapy. Geraldine completed her Doctorate in Counselling Psychology and Psychotherapy at Metanoia Institute in London. Geraldine is a senior lecturer on the Counselling & Psychotherapy training programme at Munster Technological University, Cork, Ireland. She has a particular interest in the training and education of Psychotherapists with a particular focus on pedagogy and best practice. Geraldine also runs a small private practice specialising in a body approach to Psychotherapy along with providing supervision and consultation.
Gail Simon – Looking and Listening in Online Therapy
Looking and listening are activities so well integrated into the practice of psychotherapy that we don't often study what is involved and what we are making together with these sensory activities. The shift into more online working and with the rise of social media, we live more of our social lives through screens. In this essay, I share some anecdotes to explore changes I experience in looking and listening between my in-person and online practice relationships. The changes in spatial and technological relations change our expectations about what therapy can look like. I explore whether psychotherapy is trying to reproduce old, colonised ways of doing in-person therapy in an online environment. I end by asking how embracing online living might affect how we learn more about the possibilities for doing therapy in virtual worlds.
Gail Simon is a systemic therapist at The Pink Practice, a LGBTQIA+ therapy practice. She co-founded Murmurations: Journal of Transformative Systemic Practice(murmurations.cloud) and led a research doctorate for systemic professionals. Gail’s written contributions include Systemic Inquiry and A Wild Impatience. Critical Systemic Theory and Practice
Ronen Stilman - Virtual Reality and Screen Relations in Clinical Practice – exploring co-creation, inclusivity and exclusivity
There has been a dramatic shift in the way that psychotherapy is delivered, supervised, and taught following the COVID-19 pandemic. With screens and sensory based technology seemingly everywhere and anywhere in our daily lives, many people in and out of the psychotherapy community were forced into an expanding virtual world that can sometime be seen as foreign and alien, but can also afford new possibilities and experiences. In this article I will invite practitioners to reflect on their relationship with technology and consider interpersonal and political dynamics at play. I will offer some emerging thoughts and observations about the virtual space that is co-created when relating through screens and how might we begin to understand the shift in the way that we relate and identify online. I will invite readers to account for new emerging issues of inclusion, exclusion and power presented as a result of these changes, and explore what might be gained by paying attention to these dynamics.
Ronen Stilman MSc (TA Psychotherapy), Teaching and Supervising Transactional Analyst, is a psychotherapist, supervisor and trainer, working with individuals, couples and practitioners in his Edinburgh centre practice and in Cyberspace. He has a keen interest in Humans and how they relate and identify in the context of culture, politics and society, integrating his background in technology and organisational change.
Patricia Talens - The Shaping force of Technology in Psychotherapy
Adopting psychotherapeutic technique as a technological matter in which something is learnt, deployed and applied, the article considers how the relationship between therapist and client is increasingly dominated by thinking of a technical manner. By exploring this notion through an existential lens, the conversation is expanded beyond our usual practical use of technique as a technology of change, and instead considers the implications of systematising conversations to yield outcomes and maximise results. In essence, the paper explores how we condition inquiry, and how this inquiry may in turn condition us. Bringing to the forefront, the importance of acknowledging our relationship with method and technique, as part of an ethical engagement with our practice.
Patricia Talens is a therapeutic practitioner working both privately and withinthe charity sector in London. She graduated with BA (Hons) in Criminology and Applied Psychology before spending six years working in forensic mental health.She completed her MSc in Counselling and Psychotherapy with a special interestin the role of therapeutic research and practice. This research has continued asshe is currently working towards her PhD with a focus on technique and method in psychotherapy
Ian Tucker – Digitally mediated psychotherapy: Intimacy, distance, and connection in virtual therapeutic spaces
This paper draws out key insights regarding the impact of digital technologies on psychotherapy from the European Journal of Psychotherapy and Counselling Technology, AI Bots and Psychology Special Issue. The Special Issue presents a range of conceptual, practice-based and empirical reflections on digitally mediated therapy. This includes looking back to a significant shift in digital engagement due to the Covid-19 pandemic, along with anticipations regarding the landscape of future therapeutic practices mediated by digital technologies. I will discuss key themes resonating across the Special Issue, along with attending to the some of the nuance and diversity of the potential and real implications of a greater integration of digital technologies in current and future therapeutic practice.
Ian Tucker is Professor of Health and Social Psychology at The University of East London. His research focuses on mental health, emotion and affect with a specific focus on how they are shaped through interactions with digital technologies. He has published widely in these areas, including Emotion in the Digital Age (Routledge, 2020). Ian has held grants (as PI) from the EPSRC Communities & Culture Network+, ESRC MARCH Network and the Mental Health Foundation. He has recently completed an EPSRC NewMind Network+ funded project investigating the potential to develop an AI conversational agent for mental health support based on the principles of peer support (The Empathy Agent). He is reviewer and rapporteur for EU COST Action and British Newton Fund funding programmes.
- The effects of our ‘information economy’ on our brains, consciousness, inner world and the way as psychotherapists we conceptualise
- The promise of autonomous psychotherapy programmes that integrate ‘therapy with the actual relationship experiences of the individual user’
- Whether traditional psychotherapy can provide the best antidote to the ills of our digital age.
Covid-19 has fundamentally shaken the provision of psychotherapy and psychotherapeutic counselling. It has led many clinicians to transition to a greater provision of online therapy which has been termed an Emergence of a New Paradigm (Weinberg et al 2023). Yet this is just one way in which the digital age has affected, and will affect, clinical practice. Other technological developments such as AI Bots may be fundamentally challenging our ways of being. Yet, technology is not always welcomed. For example, Heidegger (1976) considers that with technology: Everything functions and the functioning drives us further and further to more functioning, and technology tears people away and uproots them from the earth more and more.
We might therefore further consider such related question as:
- What is still not known about the advantages and disadvantages of internet psychotherapy?
- What are the implications of the digital age for therapeutic practices, theories and research?
- What can we learn about psychotherapy through internet psychotherapy?
- What are the effects on boundaries of internet psychotherapy?
- What are the effects on conscious and unconscious communication?
- What is the comparative effectiveness of different psychotherapeutic modalities across the internet?
- What are the implications of Artificial Intelligence to psychotherapy (and what are the implications of psychotherapy to AI)?
- What are the effects, including on demand and price, of therapy across borders?
- What are the political, legal, economic and/or social implications of our digital age on psychotherapy?
- What place if any in psychotherapy for post-humanism or trans-humanism?
- What are the implications of our digital age for psychotherapeutic and supervisory training?
- What might be the implications of our existing use of psychotherapy theories as technologies?
In order to facilitate such explorations, the conference day will not only include time to question speakers reporting on the cutting edge of these important developments; but, there will be space where participants can explore in small groups where they are, and where they may be going, in themselves and in their therapeutic practices.
Del Loewenthal
Chair
CPN & SAFPAC
PROGRAMME
Chairs: Del Loewenthal & Julia Cayne
Afternoon Chair: Susan Tiley (Critical Psychotherapy Network, CPN)
9.30am - 10.00am: Zoom log in
10.00am - 10.05am: Welcome, Prof Del Loewenthal - Conference Chair (Critical Psychotherapy Network and Southern Association for Psychotherapy and Counselling, UK)
10:05am – 10:20am: Introduction: Technology, AI Bots and the Internet After Covid: What future for psychotherapy - Prof Del Loewenthal - Conference Chair (Critical Psychotherapy Network and Southern Association for Psychotherapy and Counselling, UK)
10:20am – 10:40am: The Shaping force of Technology in Psychotherapy - Patricia Talens (private practice & charity sector)
10:40am - 11:00am: Looking and Listening in Online Therapy - Gail Simon (The Pink Practice)
11:00am – 11:20am: Break
11:20am – 11:40am: AI, automation and psychotherapy – a proposed model for losses and gains in the automated therapeutic encounter – Dr Helen Molden (private practice)
11:40pm – 12:00pm: Virtual Reality and Screen Relations in Clinical Practice – exploring co-creation, inclusivity and exclusivity – Ronen Stilman (private practice)
12:00pm – 12:20pm: Break
12:20pm – 1:10pm: Small Groups
1:10pm – 2.00pm: Lunch
2:00pm – 2:20pm: Connecting in a Remote World: Psychotherapy & Counselling Students’ experiences of Remote Teaching and Learning – Dr Geraldine Sheedy (Munster Technological University, Ireland)
2.20pm – 2.40pm: Virtual Parent Infant Psychotherapy is Impactful and Accessible for Mothers and Babies Attending a Community Perinatal Service – Dr Adele Greaves (NHS Perinatal Mental Health Service)
2.40pm- 2:50pm: Break
2:50pm - 3:10pm: Schrödinger's Cat Goes Online: Exploring the psychopathology of digital life – Daniel Rubinstein (Central Saint Martins UAL)
3:10pm – 3:40pm: Respondent 1 - Aaron Balick (University of Essex)
3:40pm – 3:50pm: Break
3:50pm – 4:20pm: Respondent 2 - Ian Tucker (University of East London)
4:20pm – 5:00pm: Small groups
5:00pm - 5:30pm: Plenary, Presenters, respondents and all participants
5:30pm: Conference close
SPEAKER ABSTRACTS AND BIOS
Aaron Balick - What Happens to the I/Thou When It's Mediated By An It?
The future of psychotherapy under the influence of technology - and more importantly - vice versa
Drawing on the papers submitted for this conference and the Special Issue of the European Journal of Psychotherapy and Counselling, Aaron Balick will be reflecting on the ways in which technology has come to mediate the clinical situation as well as the sociopolitical context in which all human relations are increasingly mediated by technology. Framing technology as a tool, Aaron will draw on resonant themes from across the papers to critique and speculate not only on the potential direction psychotherapy may take in the future under the influence of technology, but even more importantly (to him), how the field of psychotherapy has an obligation to look beyond the clinic and become an important voice in the development of technology itself.
Aaron Balick, PhD. is a psychotherapist, speaker, consultant, and author of the seminal text The Psychodynamics of Social Networking, which brought him international recognition as an authority on the psychology of social media and technology. Drawing on more than twenty years of clinical and academic experience, Aaron is a leading voice in the public understanding of psychology and how it can be directly applied to benefit individuals, business, and society.
Adele Greaves – Virtual Parent Infant Psychotherapy is Impactful and Accessible for Mothers and Babies Attending a Community Perinatal Service
Prior to the covid-19 pandemic, Parent-Infant Psychotherapy (PIP) was routinely offered face-to-face to mothers and babies attending a UK community perinatal mental health service. The pandemic necessitated the rapid transfer of PIP to a virtual platform to continue delivery at time of increased vulnerability for mothers and babies. This service evaluation sought to evaluate this novel method of delivery, of which, the processes and outcomes were unknown. The findings demonstrated that virtual PIP (vPIP) is impactful and accessible for mothers and their babies, with statistically significant improvements found in maternal mental health and postpartum bonding. Furthermore, Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) of interviews exploring the experience and meaning for mothers and babies engaging in vPIP, illuminated the complex therapeutic processes underlying the positive clinical outcomes. In conclusion, this small-scale service evaluation demonstrated that despite the frustrations and anxieties of working online, mothers in our sample found the overall experience of vPIP to be positive, and to result in real-world differences for them and their babies.
Dr Adele Greaves is a Clinical Psychologist who trained at the Salomons Centre for Applied Psychology at Canterbury Christ Church University and qualified in 2011. She is a full member of the British Psychological Society and registered with the HCPC. Initially, Adele specialised in the treatment of complex trauma and dissociation in an NHS Secondary Care Adult Psychological Therapies service. She then moved to an NHS Specialist Perinatal Mental Health Service and completed an Infant Observation course at the Anna Freud Centre in 2022. Adele has previously published peer reviewed journal articles on, assertive outreach services, cognitive behaviour therapy (CBT), dialectical behaviour therapy (DBT) and therapeutic puppetry.
Del Loewenthal - Introduction: Technology, AI Bots and the Internet After Covid: What future for psychotherapy
See conference brief
Del Loewenthal is Emeritus Professor of Psychotherapy and Counselling at the University of Roehampton, UK and Chair of the Southern Association for Psychotherapy and Counselling (SAFPAC) and the Critical Psychotherapy Network (CPN). Del has lectured and conducted workshops in Africa, Australasia, Europe, North and South America. He is an existential–analytic psychotherapist, photographer and chartered psychologist. His books include: Handbook of Phototherapy and Therapeutic Photography (2023 Routledge); Existential Psychotherapy and Counselling after Post-Modernism (2017, Routledge); Love, Sex and Psychotherapy in a Post-Romantic Era (2020, Routledge); Critical Existential-Analytic Psychotherapy (2021Routledge). He is also founding editor of the European Journal of Psychotherapy and Counselling (Routledge) and has a private practice in England (Wimbledon and Brighton).
Helen Molden - AI, automation and psychotherapy – a proposed model for losses and gains in the automated therapeutic encounter
With artificial intelligence (AI) and automation embedded in most aspects of life from healthcare to transportation, this article conceptualizes how increasing automation will benefit or inhibit the therapeutic encounter. Five levels of a model are outlined, from human analogue to the fully autonomous virtual (AI) therapist. The levels are referenced against key elements of the therapeutic encounter known to contribute to an effective therapeutic outcome, from the working alliance, to collaborative elements, to a confidential setting. Losses and gains are discussed through these and other aspects, such as the neurobiological, and the capability to notice what isn’t there in the process as well as what is, around the client’s aim of change or awareness. The objective is not to pit human therapist against non-human system, but to propose a human-centred framework for the integration of AI into clinical reality, by introducing a taxonomy model of human machine interaction (HMI), to see how each contributes, and to evaluate areas of risk and harm. Questions are raised around ethics, therapeutic process, and crucially the very nature of what it is to be in a therapeutic encounter for human client together with human or AI therapist.
Dr Helen Molden, DCPsych is an integrative psychotherapist and counselling psychologist with over twenty years working in the NHS, charity and private sectors, specializing in supporting people living with chronic health conditions. She currently works in independent practice, with organizations and individuals, as a clinician and researcher.
Daniel Rubinstein - Schrödinger's Cat Goes Online: Exploring the psychopathology of digital life
COVID-19 forced therapists to embrace online sessions, creating a sudden shift in the therapeutic environment. However, the integration of technology into therapy was already underway, prompting the need to explore how the online environment the therapeutic process. Drawing upon Heidegger's philosophy of technology and Whitehead’s process philosophy, this article argues that our environment and technologies shape our consciousness and subjectivity, and that both the therapist and the client are partly a product of the media ecologies of the digital age. This paper explores the concept of transitionality as proposed by Winnicott, which refers to the dynamic process through which individuals navigate between inner subjective experiences and external reality. It also examines Deleuze and Guattari's notion of faciality and the social construction of subjectivity through the screen/face as a territorializing force. By integrating these theoretical perspectives, this study seeks to shed light on the intricate relationship between individual subjectivity and online environments in shaping our experiences and identities on the screen. Overall, the article raises some questions about the use of technology in therapy and the implications for understanding the human psyche. It highlights the need to approach online therapy with awareness of the potential limitations and disturbances that may arise.
Daniel Rubinstein is a psychotherapist in private practice, he is also a Reader in Philosophy and the Image in Central Saint Martins, London and Associate Professor at School of Business, Department of Business, Strategy and Political Sciences, University of South-Eastern Norway
Geraldine Sheedy - Connecting in a Remote World: Psychotherapy & Counselling Students’ experiences of Remote Teaching and Learning
In 2017 Scholl et al. highlighted a growing trend towards online courses in Psychotherapy & Counselling training. With the emergence of the Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, this growth has accelerated, with more training now taking place in an online setting (Helmcamp & Fox 2022, Lee et al 2022, Smith, 2022). This study explored students’ experiences of remote learning on a Psychotherapy & Counselling training, with a particular focus on engagement and interaction in an online setting. A Thematic Analysis was carried out on the data and the central organising theme of Connection emerged. Three sub-themes were identified including, ‘Connection to Self’, ‘Connection to Others’ and ‘Connection to Lecturers’. Findings indicate that connection can be nurtured online through intentional instruction. Findings also suggest that students miss the personal connections that face-to-face teaching affords with a preference for a blended approach to learning. The results are used to make specific recommendations for Counselling & Psychotherapy educators.
Dr Geraldine Sheedy is a Counselling Psychologist and Psychotherapist registered with the Psychological Society of Ireland and accredited with the Irish Association for Counselling & Psychotherapy. Geraldine completed her Doctorate in Counselling Psychology and Psychotherapy at Metanoia Institute in London. Geraldine is a senior lecturer on the Counselling & Psychotherapy training programme at Munster Technological University, Cork, Ireland. She has a particular interest in the training and education of Psychotherapists with a particular focus on pedagogy and best practice. Geraldine also runs a small private practice specialising in a body approach to Psychotherapy along with providing supervision and consultation.
Gail Simon – Looking and Listening in Online Therapy
Looking and listening are activities so well integrated into the practice of psychotherapy that we don't often study what is involved and what we are making together with these sensory activities. The shift into more online working and with the rise of social media, we live more of our social lives through screens. In this essay, I share some anecdotes to explore changes I experience in looking and listening between my in-person and online practice relationships. The changes in spatial and technological relations change our expectations about what therapy can look like. I explore whether psychotherapy is trying to reproduce old, colonised ways of doing in-person therapy in an online environment. I end by asking how embracing online living might affect how we learn more about the possibilities for doing therapy in virtual worlds.
Gail Simon is a systemic therapist at The Pink Practice, a LGBTQIA+ therapy practice. She co-founded Murmurations: Journal of Transformative Systemic Practice(murmurations.cloud) and led a research doctorate for systemic professionals. Gail’s written contributions include Systemic Inquiry and A Wild Impatience. Critical Systemic Theory and Practice
Ronen Stilman - Virtual Reality and Screen Relations in Clinical Practice – exploring co-creation, inclusivity and exclusivity
There has been a dramatic shift in the way that psychotherapy is delivered, supervised, and taught following the COVID-19 pandemic. With screens and sensory based technology seemingly everywhere and anywhere in our daily lives, many people in and out of the psychotherapy community were forced into an expanding virtual world that can sometime be seen as foreign and alien, but can also afford new possibilities and experiences. In this article I will invite practitioners to reflect on their relationship with technology and consider interpersonal and political dynamics at play. I will offer some emerging thoughts and observations about the virtual space that is co-created when relating through screens and how might we begin to understand the shift in the way that we relate and identify online. I will invite readers to account for new emerging issues of inclusion, exclusion and power presented as a result of these changes, and explore what might be gained by paying attention to these dynamics.
Ronen Stilman MSc (TA Psychotherapy), Teaching and Supervising Transactional Analyst, is a psychotherapist, supervisor and trainer, working with individuals, couples and practitioners in his Edinburgh centre practice and in Cyberspace. He has a keen interest in Humans and how they relate and identify in the context of culture, politics and society, integrating his background in technology and organisational change.
Patricia Talens - The Shaping force of Technology in Psychotherapy
Adopting psychotherapeutic technique as a technological matter in which something is learnt, deployed and applied, the article considers how the relationship between therapist and client is increasingly dominated by thinking of a technical manner. By exploring this notion through an existential lens, the conversation is expanded beyond our usual practical use of technique as a technology of change, and instead considers the implications of systematising conversations to yield outcomes and maximise results. In essence, the paper explores how we condition inquiry, and how this inquiry may in turn condition us. Bringing to the forefront, the importance of acknowledging our relationship with method and technique, as part of an ethical engagement with our practice.
Patricia Talens is a therapeutic practitioner working both privately and withinthe charity sector in London. She graduated with BA (Hons) in Criminology and Applied Psychology before spending six years working in forensic mental health.She completed her MSc in Counselling and Psychotherapy with a special interestin the role of therapeutic research and practice. This research has continued asshe is currently working towards her PhD with a focus on technique and method in psychotherapy
Ian Tucker – Digitally mediated psychotherapy: Intimacy, distance, and connection in virtual therapeutic spaces
This paper draws out key insights regarding the impact of digital technologies on psychotherapy from the European Journal of Psychotherapy and Counselling Technology, AI Bots and Psychology Special Issue. The Special Issue presents a range of conceptual, practice-based and empirical reflections on digitally mediated therapy. This includes looking back to a significant shift in digital engagement due to the Covid-19 pandemic, along with anticipations regarding the landscape of future therapeutic practices mediated by digital technologies. I will discuss key themes resonating across the Special Issue, along with attending to the some of the nuance and diversity of the potential and real implications of a greater integration of digital technologies in current and future therapeutic practice.
Ian Tucker is Professor of Health and Social Psychology at The University of East London. His research focuses on mental health, emotion and affect with a specific focus on how they are shaped through interactions with digital technologies. He has published widely in these areas, including Emotion in the Digital Age (Routledge, 2020). Ian has held grants (as PI) from the EPSRC Communities & Culture Network+, ESRC MARCH Network and the Mental Health Foundation. He has recently completed an EPSRC NewMind Network+ funded project investigating the potential to develop an AI conversational agent for mental health support based on the principles of peer support (The Empathy Agent). He is reviewer and rapporteur for EU COST Action and British Newton Fund funding programmes.
