Is a ‘good enough’ experience possible for patients and clinicians through remote consultations? A guide to surviving remote therapy, based on psychoanalytic and neuroscientific literature

Abstract

This paper aims to find ways that remote therapy can provide a ‘good enough’ experience for both patients and clinicians, given that due to the COVID-19 pandemic, it has become the new reality for most. Firstly, I consider the challenges remote therapy poses for clinicians and patients. I then draw on psychoanalytic and neuroscientific literature to help conceptualise differences between therapy in person and remote therapy. Then, I explore how emotional attunement can be achieved through remote therapy. I use four clinical examples to illustrate the differences between therapy in person and remote therapy, but also show how clinicians can use more second-order communication or reflect openly upon misattunements to re-establish attunement with patients. Finally, I give some practical suggestions to clinicians, with a more tailored and specific advice to psychotherapists.

Keywords:

• attunement
• misattunement
• remote therapy
• holding

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.