ABSTRACT
Psychotherapy by telephone allows us to offer treatment to patients who may not otherwise have access to it: those in rural areas; those in high-density population areas in which commuting is excessively time-consuming and onerous; and those for whom, like patients in conservative religious communities, in business or politics, a higher degree of privacy may be required. In the three cases presented here, telephone sessions allowed for continuation of treatment, after I had moved to another state, for patients who had made a hefty investment in their treatments up to that time. Two of the patients are women who transitioned from in-person psychotherapy to telephone psychotherapy, and eventually to four times weekly telephone psychoanalyses, and the third patient is a man who had not been able to attach to the therapeutic process in person but was later able to develop a telephone treatment. Following the transition to telephone psychoanalysis, the two women reacted with intense negative transferences. Using concepts from Klein, object relations theory, and Bion, I hold the frame, follow the affect, and process and interpret the response. I apply the usual analytic functions of holding, containment, and interpretation, just as I would do in in-person analysis.
