Technology as a Play Object in Teleanalysis with Young Children

ABSTRACT

The COVID-19 pandemic, mid-March 2020, catapulted us into a new frontier of distance analysis and teletherapy as an emergency response to preserve continuity with both children and adults. The digital screen served as a metaphorical mask that protected the analytic couple from transmitting COVID-19 to one another, but patients and analysts alike were thrust into a shared catastrophic trauma. This paper will describe a four-times weekly, teleanalytic journey over the first six months of the COVID-19 pandemic with a seven-year-old child that built upon a three-year, in-office analysis. Rather than regarding teleanalysis as an experimental treatment, this paper illustrates ways children can employ technology as a play object, transference and countertransference can be analyzed online, and teleanalysis can be an effective and periodic alternative to in-office work with a vulnerable child population even after the end of the COVID-19 pandemic.

KEYWORDS:

• COVID-19 pandemic
• teleanalysis
• distance-mediated treatment
• child teleanalysis
• technology
• play
• trauma

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Caroline Sehon

Caroline M. Sehon M.D., FABP—Director of the International Psychotherapy Institute (IPI); Supervising child and adult psychoanalyst at IPI; Past chairperson of the International Institute for Psychoanalytic Training (IIPT) and its Clinical Teleanalysis Research Group at IPI; Member of the IPA Committee on Child and Adolescent Psychoanalysis (COCAP); Clinical professor of psychiatry at Georgetown University School of Medicine. Presenter, nationally and internationally; Author, articles and book chapters on ethics; child, couple and family therapy and analysis; and teleanalysis; Private practice in adult and child psychiatry and psychoanalysis in Bethesda, Maryland.