There may be no reason to think that either form of contact is more or less virtual than the other. Mary Chayko, in “Connecting: How We Form Social Bonds and Communities in the Internet Age”, describes the relational bonds made online as “Sociomental” because they “exist primarily in the mental realm”. It seems to me that all relational bonds are fundamentally sociomental (or “virtual”) in this sense…

This is indeed a mind melter!

I think it is interesting that we can seem more trusting of an experience when it is physically close to us e.g. we can reach out and touch the therapist as they are sitting in front of us.

Perhaps the result of a mind that looks out into the world via a body … and there have been other ways to experience time and space that are not associated with the physical, cultures have for thousands of years thought of these as spiritual and transcendent … could that be the kind of contact that online relating offers, a touching of the person to the inner core, unpolluted by physical presence?

And as you so rightly say … there is much eveidence after the encounter to evidence its happening.

Thanks for an extremely thought provoking post!

John
http://www.wilsoncounselling.co.uk
http://www.onlinevents.co.uk