The experience of working via tele video in Australia during the Covid-19 pandemic

ABSTRACT

This paper examines some of the challenges involved in working via tele video in Melbourne Australia during the Covid-19 pandemic. Several factors are identified that contribute to the success of tele video with patients. These include the maintenance of a clinical stance that enables a direct managing of the issues of boundaries and space in the tele video setting. Despite the author’s earlier reservations, the tele video experience has identified how powerfully transference issues are communicated and how these appear to transcend what we may have assumed to be the limitations of the tele video setting. Attention is paid to what is seen, revealed, and recognised during the tele video sessions and how these elements contribute to creating a three-dimensional experience within a two-dimensional space. The question of carrying out assessment and diagnosis online is discussed in the context of work with adolescents to clearly delineate between ordinary transient reactions and pathological or prodromal reactions in the adolescent.

KEYWORDS:

• Melbourne Australia
• the clinical stance
• boundaries and space
• transference issues
• assessment and diagnosis of adolescents
• prodromal signs and symptoms

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Ruth Schmidt Neven

Ruth Schmidt Neven PhD is a child psychotherapist and clinical psychologist. She is the founder director of the Centre for Child and Family Development in Melbourne Australia and was previously inaugural Chief Child Psychotherapist at the Royal Children’s Hospital in Melbourne. In addition to her extensive clinical work, she has run training programmes throughout Australia and internationally, based on her model that conceptualizes links between the core developmental task, and interactive child parent assessment and therapy. She is the author of four books, the most recent being Time-limited Psychodynamic Psychotherapy with Children and Adolescents: An interactive approach (Routledge, 2017). She has published articles and chapters on clinical work that include attention deficit disorder, under-fives counselling and critiques of contemporary pathology-based child and family mental health practices. She was a keynote speaker at the first Key Debate on Child Psychotherapy Research held in October 2018 in London.