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Cited by 109Cybernetics and Technology in SocietyTelemedicine and Telehealth ImplementationHistorical Psychiatry and Medical Practices

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The Distance Cure: A History of Teletherapy

Open access
Zeavin, Hannah·2021·The MIT Press eBooks
DOI 10.7551/mitpress/12823.001.0001
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Abstract

Psychotherapy across distance and time, from Freud's treatments by mail to crisis hotlines, radio call-ins, chatbots, and Zoom sessions. Therapy has long understood itself as taking place in a room, with two (or more) people engaged in person-to-person conversation. And yet, starting with Freud's treatments by mail, psychotherapy has operated through multiple communication technologies and media. These have included advice columns, radio broadcasts, crisis hotlines, video, personal computers, and mobile phones; the therapists (broadly defined) can be professional or untrained, strangers or chatbots. In The Distance Cure, Hannah Zeavin proposes a reconfiguration of the traditional therapeutic dyad of therapist and patient as a triad: therapist, patient, and communication technology. Zeavin tracks the history of teletherapy (understood as a therapeutic interaction over distance) and its metamorphosis from a model of cure to one of contingent help. She describes its initial use in ongoing care, its role in crisis intervention and symptom management, and our pandemic-mandated reliance on regular Zoom sessions. Her account of the “distanced intimacy” of the therapeutic relationship offers a powerful rejoinder to the notion that contact across distance (or screens) is always less useful, or useless, to the person seeking therapeutic treatment or connection. At the same time, these modes of care can quickly become a backdoor for surveillance and disrupt ethical standards important to the therapeutic relationship. The history of the conventional therapeutic scenario cannot be told in isolation from its shadow form, teletherapy. Therapy, Zeavin tells us, was never just a “talking cure”; it has always been a communication cure.

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Metadata

Authors
Zeavin, H.
Corresponding author
Zeavin, Hannah
ORCID
Zeavin, Hannah
Venue
The MIT Press eBooks
Publisher
The MIT Press
Published
2021-08-17
DOI
10.7551/mitpress/12823.001.0001
OpenAlex
W4250258138
Cited by
109
References
196
Citations by year
2026: 9 · 2025: 37 · 2024: 29 · 2023: 19 · 2022: 11 · 2021: 4
FWCI
36.77
Type
book
Language
en
Open access
Locations
The MIT Press eBooks (publishedVersion)
Topics
  • Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › History and Philosophy of Science › Cybernetics and Technology in Society
  • Health Sciences › Medicine › Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health › Telemedicine and Telehealth Implementation
  • Social Sciences › Psychology › Clinical Psychology › Historical Psychiatry and Medical Practices
Keywords
external beam radiotherapy, remote therapy, history of psychotherapy, communication technology, therapeutic relationship, crisis hotlines, chatbots, Zoom, telemedicine, surveillance, ethics of therapy, COVID-19 pandemic, crisis intervention

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