Psyberspace

Kristie Holmes has a site: Online Therapy Research Study

She has a recent pdf of useful resources and current literature.

I appreciate the effort, thanks Kristie.

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This literature, and in the online therapy field there is so much diversity. There is diversity of helping profession: Social Work, counselling, career, health and specific mental illness focused approaches, from a variety of professions.

My own sphere of psychotherapy is poorly represented online. Psychotherapy is relationship based as works with the unconscious. Perhaps many psychotherapists believe it can’t be done online. When I google the following line:

“psychotherapy online” unconscious relationship

The first two results point to my own site. There are only 112 other sites. When I check the next few sites only one other one offers psychotherapy online, and the modality seems to be solution focused cognitive therapy, which is similar in some ways to my work, but significantly different, to a more psychodynamic approach with awareness of the “here & now” psychotherapeutic alliance.

From an online perspective the diversity broadens out, as there are so many different ways of working online. What is the therapeutic container for the work? Some therapists mix online and f2f, others use scheduled times for chat or video, some use email. Payment varies from by hour to “subscriptions”. I use email only as a therapeutic frame, as the “stage”. I do not make appointments, but use the asynchronicity of the Internet to make use of time in an optimum way. I charge by the hour. These decisions about method online have their roots in my psychotherapy principles and in the way I approach the psyche.

I wonder how useful reseach can be in such a diverse world?

I intend to hang-in there with this question, as some overview of this work is needed.