One smart object – three layers of smartphone use in discovering an encapsulated patient’s inner world*

ABSTRACT

This paper explores the use of a smartphone within a therapy. It describes its use as a screen object in the service of survival-oriented infantile omnipotence, towards its use as a bridge that facilitated the structuring of internal space and the emergence of nascent capacities for relatedness and introspection. Clinical material from a ten year-long therapy with an adopted girl illustrates the presence of the smartphone on three layers of the therapeutic relationship. First, on a sensory level, the smartphone was used as an almost autistic screening object, but also as an auditory-visual envelope where therapist and patient could be immersed together. Second, on the level of patient-therapist communication and transference relations, the use of the smartphone revived infantile trauma involving the internalisation of a parental gaze that established a distorted internal and external gaze experience, which I termed ‘psychic cross-eyes’. Third, the smartphone served as a ‘third’ object that helped establish our shared observation of reality, and of the patient’s own psyche. By dwelling together, and developing a private language of ‘being-with’ ‘inside’ the phone, while gradually interpreting primitive anxieties and defences in terms of withdrawal from relatedness, we were able to add greater flexibility to the patient’s notion of relatedness, establish her binocular vision, and promote the development of the inner witness function. The paper thus explores the smartphone’s transition from a sterile, screening object, to a communicative, ‘object-seeking’ presence.

KEYWORDS:

• Screen object; smartphone; infantile trauma; adoption; psychic cross-eyes; inner witness function

Disclosure statement

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

Notes

1. Consent has been granted by my patient and her family for publication of this paper, and clinical material has been anonymised.Netta is a pseudonym, chosen as it is a common Israeli name, which means ‘seedling’. Its Hebrew connotations hold two contradictory meanings: something rooted and stable versus something that stands out as foreign.I felt unsure whether Netta’s family would give their permission for the publication of this paper. They consented to a phone conversation, during which I was able to discuss the content and main themes of the paper. Based on this conversation, they agreed to publication and signed a consent form. Netta also signed a consent form, but a few weeks later, asked to meet. It was a year and a half after our last meeting. I wondered if she would like me to tell her about the paper, and she did. She was touched by how many details about her I remembered but was not interested in thinking more around the issues written at the time. Interestingly, since then, she has kept in touch with me through short phone calls, photos, and messages. I wonder if these actions are her way of telling me that she internalised our therapeutic relations in her way as she understood them from the paper.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Idit Dori

Idit Dori is a clinical psychologist, and a child and adult psychoanalyst. She facilitates and teaches on a programme for psychoanalytic developmental thinking at the Israeli Psychanalytic Society. She works in a private clinic in Zichron Yaacov, Israel.