Clinical interventions via Skype with parents and their young children

Abstract

In this article, the author discusses her experience of working with six families from two Greek islands. She focuses on her reflections and reservations on using cyber-communication technology in brief psychoanalytic parent–infant psychotherapy. Communication technology may be a useful way of providing support to families with young children living in remote areas without mental health services. Advances in cyber-communication have created the possibility of offering timely, primary mental health care to prevent difficulties becoming chronic and complex. The parent–infant psychotherapy focuses mainly on emotional difficulties related to stress in the parents’ and infant’s life and on transgenerational problems. The use of cyber-communication (Skype) for this work raises many issues and difficulties and the need for changes in technique, the expectation of technical difficulties and interruptions, the absence of physical proximity, differences in establishing the therapeutic relationship, the working alliance, transference and counter transference phenomena and in the power of unconscious processes.

Keywords:

• Parent–infant psychotherapy
• access
• Skype
• timely intervention

Acknowledgements

Thanks are due to the Niarchos Institute which sponsored the project with a whole multidisciplinary team and, I am, of course most grateful to the families and small children who took part. Special thanks go to Giannis Papakonstantinou, Regina Gourdomichali, Aspasia Kalpadaki, Maria Chamaoui, Giota Dimitrakopoulou, Amanta Filipatou, George Sideris, Maria Diamanti, Jouli Skourigianni, Venia Aslanidou, Antonia Doula, Maria Mazi, Antonianna Spanou, Eva Koufidaki, Fotini Zografou and to Louise Emanuel and Effie Lignos.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Dr Marie Ange Widdershoven graduated as a Psychologist in the University of Amsterdam and a Child and Adolescent Psychotherapist at the Hellenic Institute of Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy (HIPP) in Athens. She is a delegate for Greece in the Child and Adolescent Section of the European Federation of Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy (EFPP). She teaches Infant Observation and supervises for HIPP and works as a therapist and supervisor with an early intervention programme. She was Head of Child Psychotherapy at Doxiadis Diagnostic and Therapeutic Unit for Children and Adolescents for 30 years. She is currently Head of Mental Health and Social Services Department at the ‘Theotokos Foundation’ in Athens, working with developmentally delayed and disabled children and developing an early intervention programme as well as working in private practice.