Article Review: Remote Working During the Pandemic (Gillian Isaacs Russell, 2020)

In this Q&A with the board of the British Journal of Psychotherapy (BJP), psychoanalyst Gillian Isaacs Russell, author of the 2015 book Screen Relations, discusses changes to the experience of psychotherapy brought about by the twin factors of the Covid-19 pandemic and the abrupt shift to “mediated communication” by phone or video conferencing (p. 1). Implicitly, the author writes from the standpoint that, beyond providing for continuity of care, there are no therapeutic opportunities inherent to technologically mediated treatment for either patient or therapist, and expresses the hope that “the value of co-present relating has been rediscovered and reasserted” (p. 10). This short review hopes to provide some element for patients and practitioners who wish to put this in perspective with their own experience.