Presented by
Stillpoint Spaces
Organizer’s description:
As we turn toward technology to mediate all types of relational connection, many psychotherapists are enthusiastically embracing computer-mediated treatment. Ironically, this land rush towards “screen relations” based treatment comes at the very time when leading researchers on how technology shapes relationships are voicing serious concerns about the damage technological mediation does to both intimate connection and reflective solitude. Do therapeutic couples need the traditional experience of presence and not just technologically simulated presence to deepen psychoanalytic process?
Gillian Isaacs Russell Ph.D., a member of the British Psychoanalytic Council and an author of the book „Screen Relations”, will explore this question through the lens of informatics, neuroscience, infant development, and psychoanalysis. In view of the current state of communication technology and the fact that we have evolved to relate as bodies together, it will be argued that we need to experience presence in a shared environment to “keep it real.” Discussion will be encouraged about the clinical–and global– implications of bodies being together and apart.
