ABSTRACT
The COVID-19 pandemic provides a real-world opportunity to explore the Winnicottian concepts of transitional objects and transitional phenomena in the context of online or distance treatment. The capacity for transitionality, delineated by Angela Joyce, may be an important element in determining a patient’s ability to use remote therapy. The case report of a young child’s pre-pandemic and interpandemic remote psychoanalytic treatment is used to illustrate the developing capacity of transitionality and possible technical interventions to promote its elaboration.
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Susan L. Donner
Susan L. Donner, M.D., is a child, adolescent and adult psychiatrist and psychoanalyst in private practice in Woodland Hills, California. She is a Training and Child, Adolescent and Adult Supervising Analyst, Chair of Child and Adolescent Psychoanalytic Training, and Director of the NCP 0-21 Child and Adolescent Clinic at the New Center for Psychoanalysis in Los Angeles. She is also an Associate Clinical Professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences at the UCLA Semel Institute of Neuroscience and Human Behavior and Director of the Child Psychiatry Fellowship’s Area of Distinction in Psychoanalytic Perspectives. Dr. Donner is the 2019 winner of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry’s Rieger Psychodynamic Psychotherapy Award.