ABSTRACT
For didactic purposes, it is useful to engage with empathy in individual, one-on-one, in-person therapy, group in-person, individual one-on-one online, and group online. Thus, at first glance, one may get the impression that the individuals are totally available in-person, but become progressively less available as one moves from an off-line to an online milieu. We argue this is not so. First comes empathy, then comes its applications. Each of these milieus – individual and group, offline and online – has its own distinctive way in which empathy shows up and succeeds or fails. It is not as if going online suddenly renders human relations inauthentic, though going online may indeed present new challenges to authenticity. We explore the trade-offs, the advantages and disadvantages of each. The transference to the online technology becomes the obstacle and the enabler of the process of online therapy (both individual and group). The technology itself becomes the two-ton elephant in the living room. The person (including the therapist) who is helpless and dependent off-line inevitably shows up that way online. The person who “fakes it” off-line does so online, too. We get a whole new class of slips of symptomatic actions and slips of the tongues relating to failures of the technology. One is pouring one’s heart out overcoming one’s shame and inhibitions – oops, the person was “on mute” and no one heard about it. A voice crying in the wilderness? Just like everywhere else in one’s life? The definition of empathy, individually and in group, is applied to the advantages and disadvantages of engaging empathically off-line and online. The Genie – online communications – is out of the bottle, and turning back the clock is not an option. The future belongs to those who are able to interpret and manage the transference off-line – and online.
