ABSTRACT

This article proposes that psychic experiences of ‘dyslocation’, ‘dysembodiment’ and ‘psychic slippage’ can occur in relation to the object ‘on’ or ‘in’ the screen – ‘the screen object’ – in the context of working remotely using televideo technology with children in psychoanalytic psychotherapy. This is explored in the context of a child’s experience when treatment started in person and then changed to remote working. The loss of the therapeutic setting and frame in mid-treatment can constitute a rupture and a trauma, experienced at a primitive level as the loss of ‘bounded space’ and of psychic orientation to the object. This experience may evoke psychotic or borderline-type anxieties associated with disembodiment, depersonalisation, derealisation or annihilation. Concepts from Linguistics of deixis, endophora and exophora – concerning orientation in place, time and person relative to context – are applied to the situation of remote working with televideo technology, to highlight tensions in this setting in the way emotional meaning and understanding are derived from the surrounding context. The screen as part of the setting/frame gives rise to ‘slippages’ of various kinds. In order to explore the theme of ‘the screen object’, the author draws on experimental psychology research on infant responses to televideo technology; psychological or psychiatric theories of disembodiment; and psychoanalytic theory related to the ‘body ego’ and ‘skin-ego’, the psychoanalytic setting, and remote or virtual psychoanalysis. It is speculated that elements of the psychic experience of ‘the screen object’ are likely to be present to some degree in all remote working using video technology, whether in response to a traumatic disruption to treatment in person as discussed in this article, or whether remote treatment is the agreed treatment from the beginning.

摘要

本文提出，在使用电视视频远程工作的背景下，与屏幕“上”或“内”的对象（“屏幕对象”）相关的“错位”、“身体障碍”和“心理滑移”的心理体验可能会发生与儿童进行精神分析心理治疗的技术。这是在儿童开始亲自治疗然后改为远程工作时的经历的背景下进行的探索。在治疗中期，治疗环境和框架的丧失可能构成破裂和创伤，在原始水平上体验为“有界空间”的丧失和对对象的精神取向的丧失。这种经历可能会唤起与人格解体、人格解体、现实解体或湮灭相关的精神病性或边缘型焦虑。来自指示语言学的概念，Endophora 和 exophora——关于地点、时间和人相对于上下文的方向——被应用于远程工作的情况，使用电视视频技术，以从周围环境中衍生出情感意义和理解的方式来突出这种环境中的紧张局势。屏幕作为设置/框架的一部分会引起各种“滑动”。为了探索“屏幕对象”这一主题，作者借鉴了婴儿对电视技术反应的实验心理学研究；脱离肉体的心理学或精神病学理论；与“身体自我”和“皮肤自我”相关的精神分析理论、精神分析环境以及远程或虚拟精神分析。