ABSTRACT
Psychoanalysts took great care to keep their offices immersed in silence, protected from the outside world. Even telephones and answering machines were seen as dangerous objects for a long time; they could infringe on the neutrality of analysis and the resultant request from patients to adapt to it. The information revolution arrived, and our offices experienced a gradual invasion of cell phones. Imperceptible sounds would break the silence: beep tones, signalling the arrival of messages, or ringtones, which even if “silenced” would alert to an incoming phone call. If psychoanalysts think of telephone and Skype analysis spreading, the picture becomes particularly disturbing, getting all the more vivid thanks to how the virtual excludes and gets used to the absence of direct contact between bodies, with the complexities, limits, fragilities, and consistency that physical co-presence carries with it.
