Are Relationships Online as Valid as Face-to-Face Relationships?
Voices: The Art and Science of Psychotherapy just published an article I wrote entitled Filling the Void in the Virtual Consultation Room. I describe in a rather existential and experiential way, my experience of conducting psychotherapy via chat. With no visual or auditory cues, the experience of psychotherapy online is different. Not less valid, but different. I explain how it is different and what about the process I find to be rich and fulfilling.
Two commentaries follow my article. Neither commentary is particularly supportive or positive about what I offer. And that is not really the point. After years of training therapists in text-based therapy, and now as my training includes therapy conducted in virtual world settings, I am quite accustomed to opposition. But I have noticed a common theme emerging.
Counselors and psychotherapists tend to discount relationships online. As more technology infiltrates our lives, online relating becomes more and more off-putting to some. I personally have never posited that online counseling will replace face-to-face psychotherapy. I find that both experiences hold depth for the client and psychotherapist. I see the benefit of delivering psychotherapy in the flesh as well as via technology.
Mental Health practitioners often do not understand how the art of psychotherapy can occur online. As with anything new, it takes a while to make the shift. And some choose not to- which is fine. But with the advent of email, chat, social networking and virtual worlds, our work becomes transformed as psychotherapy meets mixed reality. While online relating is not enjoyable or fulfilling for some, others view their online relationships as a viable part of life and as real as any relationship that occurs face-to-face. I find some in this profession are threatened by this notion. But I think there are enough differences between us with our lives now full of so many choices for relating, both traditionally and through social media, that there is room for growth and expansiveness within the art of pscyhotherapy.
What do you think?
DeeAnna
I’d like to quote Martha Ainsworth on this, as she says in her chapter “My life as an E-patient” in Bob Hsuing’s book:
“I was challenged, conforted, and empowered. [The e-therapy] was profoundly healing, and my life changed for the better… as close as I am to [my face-to-face therapist], there are still things I cannot say when I am in his presence. When I have something very difficult to talk about, I return to the private, shielded, nonvisual connection of email.”
Perhaps your critics should listen to the client POV?
Kate
It is strange for a profession that is so concerned with achieving positive change in our clients. That is sometimes in the face of resistance too, often showing themes that can help understand what’s going on. .
There’s research to say we are a technologically resistant lot too (like http://counselingoutfitters.com/Schaefle.htm) . Its always right to progress with evidence rather than ahead of it but theres a whole lot of professional-sociology to do on this.
Im often surprised about the fears of replacing the couch with a keyboard and questions on whether relating online is ‘real’ persist even now. Can it be in any really serious doubt that real, deep affective bonds can grow over the Internet? Or that communicating face to face is in no way threatened by that.
It’s clearly a highly charged subject, this online relationship lark but it really isn’t new, it’s just the technology that is and it’s that, I believe, that is creating the resistance. People have always had a need to write to someone in private. People have ‘penpals’ or ‘lockable’ diaries as kids, for example and I would imagine prayer is another version. Writing in a trusted book or to a friend you’ll never meet and now to an online counsellor in a password and encrypted format, all provide an opportunity to have something of one’s very own. The client/counsellor is surely a relationship at its most perfect – each person trying their best to have no agenda other than to achieve an honest and trustworthy connection. To have this very personal and safe outlet is therapeutic, of course, whichever format it takes. I imagine the internet is treated with suspicion because it’s a machine, so the assumption is that nothing ‘real’ can happen ‘inside’ it. How can this attitude be changed? and how long will it take?
Good point, Helen – and the “Internet=Machine” is still a reality in its current form.
But *oh* I can’t wait for Web 2.0 (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_2.0 – sorry I keep banging on about it) and how that will be perceived by practitioners, because what with the tweeting and blogging and commenting…. the attitude should already be changing (see my tweet on the article in The Guardian for example http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2009/jan/29/twitter). How long will it take?? I’d say about another five years for the profession as a whole – it took about that to get this far with regard to technology and therapy being acceptable, if not accepted (I refer to UK in this case, although I’m fairly confident in being able to generalise).
Kate
The question about how ‘real’ online relationships are depends on what criteria people use to define ‘real’. It would appear that many people consider physical proximity to be an essential factor of a ‘real’ relationship without giving any consideration to the purpose of the relationship. A counselling or psychotherapy relationship is formed for the purpose of bringing about psychological change, growth or repair and the first essential factor for that purpose is psychological connection, not physical proximity.
Can psychological connection occur without physical proximity? Of course it can! Psychological connection doesn’t even need to be ‘interactive’ to be effective; I have achieved psychological connection with M. Scott Peck, Susan Jeffers and Mitch Albom to name but a few!
But the proof of the pudding is in the eating and I think that people will continue to be critical about online relationships until they experience one for themselves.
Helen
Foe me these criticism’s are nothing to do with the client, if it was not possible to create relationships online then social networking would not exist and neither would soap opera’s or any part of Hollywood for that matter.
It has been possible to build relationships with authors for centuries through the technology of writing and printing, only now the reader is interactive balancing the power share in the relationship … is it this redress of power that worries critics?
I am also not worried by these criticisms in a world that can feel overpopulated by therapists, the more professionals who keep themselves away from online counselling the more space there is for us to do our work properly.
In our age of technology, we might reformulate Nietzsche to say,
The Internet gives the impression of being an interim state; the old ways of thinking, the old old cultures are still partly with us, the new not yet secure and habitual and thus lacking in decisiveness and consistency.
Thus it is that the contours of an emerging mixed reality world economy are still imperceptible to the majority of our professions at this time.
Your article constructs a detailed portrait of virtual psychotherapy for a therapist and client, and is a useful exploration of the virtual therapy room.
The criticisms of your article are extremely naive in the sense of naive realism. There is unfortunately too much naive realism around. By this I simply mean understandings of reality that conflate real with actual without understanding that the virtual has always been real, just not actual.
Consider how the first asks if the virtual clinic and social transactions between online therapist and client “really” constitutes a shared space.
“Is this really a ’shared space’ or simply an anonymous place entered from two different vantage points?” – Stephen Howard
Of course its a shared space! Is it not totally obvious that not only online psychotherapy relationships but also entire online communities such as MySpace, Facebook, Twitter etc. are real shared spaces?
This by the way is beyond a matter of perception. It is fundamentally about reality. An ontological question. Yes these really are shared spaces, and human ones too!
Why can’t an anonymous space entered from two vantage points (two individuals, identities, psyches whatever you wish to call it) not be a shared space by the way?
Consider what the next writer has to offer…
“But for the real deal, it takes a live, messy human in person, not an avatar in purity” – Kristin Staroba
Again the same naive realism, as though there are not real live messy (or tidy) persons vitally attached to our virtual identities and lives.
Staroba attempts I believe to critique the therapeutic style or approach taken (which differs obviously from Staroba’s) but ends up confusing this with the medium / technology.
“While like classical analysis, it may provide a blank slate, it ultimately leaves the patient alone, connected to the therapist only by a stream of electronic data” – Staroba
It seems because the online therapy relationship is mediated by electronics, this somehow de-realizes the relationship. How absurd! I wonder if these writers actually stop to consider the ontological consequences of their statements?
But then, psychotherapists in the main have not been big on philosophy or ontology, for all their interests in so-called reality, authenticity, ethics and the like. Isn’t it about time to raise the bar in the profession a little, at least so that we can develop more sophisticated and less impoverished conceptualizations of reality?
It is more than possible to actually experience someone without them being physically there. In fact, how many of us have felt lonely, even when in the physical company of others?
As an SL immersionist, I concur with Helen’s post. Online relationships are very real. This is seen most clearly in working with clients dealing with addictions to virtual (avatar based) worlds. Until practitioners appreciate the experience from the consumer’s side of the screen, it is challenging to truly conceptualize how relationships (healthy and unhealthy) are created and maintained online. The emotions around them can be intoxicating. I believe this is is primarily due to the anonymity that the internet provides. It allows us to present ourselves in the ways we may be unable to in our real lives (for a variety of reasons). When we connect with someone who accepts this ideal of ourselves the validation often draws us in. The challenge, however, is that because of the “connection” difficulties of online communication (technical difficulties, time zone differences, time lapses in communication) there are many gaps left in our perception which, in our human nature, we want to fill with meaning. The meaning we give can sometimes help us believe that the person we have connected with is also ideal (perfect!) since our tendency is to create meaning from our own understanding/experiences. More often than not, if a real life connection is made, in time the gaps are filled with the “reality” of who the person is leaving both individuals feeling deceived and unfulfilled. Please visit my web group for more on my opinions on this topic!
I thank you for posting this interesting post, I’m so interesting in topics.
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