Consent for publication and the future of psychoanalysis

ABSTRACT

The future development of psychoanalysis relies on our ongoing ability to make readily available our most recent clinical discussions and related theoretical developments. However, to publish ethically, we must also be aware of the ‘unboundaried’ nature of the current digital world, and the implication that what we write will be widely accessible, including being accessible to those patients we are writing about. The upshot of this is the need to seek informed and signed consent from those patients we write about and offer to provide them with a draft of what we write. This contribution considers the difficulties in seeking informed consent, and offers some suggestions for dealing with these difficulties.

KEYWORDS:

• Co-construction
• collaborative/therapeutic assessment
• digital media
• informed consent
• unboundariedness, psychoanalytic writing

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Robin Holloway

Robin Holloway is a Psychologist providing psychoanalytic psychotherapy to children, adolescents, and adults in Toronto, Canada. He is a graduate of CICAPP (The Canadian Institute for Child and Adolescent Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy), for which he is now a supervisor and a teacher. Robin is in private practice at The Willow Centre in Toronto. At The Willow Centre, Robin has the privilege of working with a small group of like-minded clinicians who together can discuss their cases. Robin previously worked for twenty years in the Child and Family Services department of a public hospital. After the abrupt and worldwide transition from in person to online psychoanalytic treatment in 2020, Robin and three of his colleagues contributed a paper to this Journal dealing with online child psychotherapy in the context of the pandemic. This in turn resulted in stimulating email discussions with Alexandra de Rementeria (Editor-in-Chief of this Journal), Robin’s participation in an online seminar sponsored by this Journal entitled Issues Around Consent to Publish Clinical Material (Holloway, 2022), and finally resulted in this paper.