Hanging on the telephone: reflections on conducting psychotherapy over the phone during the Covid pandemic

ABSTRACT

This paper is a discussion of the experience of conducting psychotherapy sessions over the phone during the Covid pandemic. It explores the constraints and advantages of psychotherapy over the phone. It refers to Freud and the original setting of psychoanalysis and discusses the ideas of Bion about the need for the therapist to attune in a state of reverie to the client’s communications. It reflects on the phone as a symbolic lifeline during the Covid crisis.

KEYWORDS:

• Telephone
• psychoanalytic setting
• maternal reverie
• right brain to right brain communication
• Bion
• Covid-19 pandemic

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Anna Cohen

Anna Cohen is a senior Child and Adolescent Psychotherapist who specialises in therapy with young people who have experienced trauma. She trained at the Tavistock Clinic and has worked in the NHS for twenty years. With a doctorate in social anthropology from the London School of Economics, she has done mental health research and service development in India and Italy.