International Survey of Negative and Positive Reactions to Psychoanalytic Distance Treatment at the Beginning of the Pandemic

Abstract

We conducted an international survey to better understand both the negative and positive reactions of distance treatment during the pandemic. We received 1,490 survey responses from practitioners from 56 regions and countries who remotely treated patients psychoanalytically during the beginning months of the Covid-19 pandemic. Eighty-nine percent of the practitioners agreed or strongly agreed that distance treatment is valuable when the patient is house-bound or when travel would be difficult or impractical. They also expected to treat about 47% of their patients via teletherapy in the future. A minority group (17%) with mainly negative opinions does not feel that distance analytic treatment is effective with exploring mental life. Those with mainly negative opinions had more difficulty with the technology, had little value for teletherapy even for the patient who is homebound or when travel would be impractical, and considered bodily presence as very important to outcome. The majority of respondents who have mainly positive opinions feel that they can work effectively with transference, resistance and relational problems in distance analytic treatment.