Presence and Absence of the Body in Psychotherapy During Lockdown

This chapter focuses on the changes implied in distance therapy in relation to the role of the body which very important in what he calls the co-transference, the relationship between therapist and patient. During lockdown the encounter between patient and psychotherapist is no longer a meeting of two psyches/bodies, but a meeting between two images, two partial, superficial representations of the body: the representations of the faces of the two protagonists, therapist and patient, on a monitor. As for the method of analytic psychotherapy, precisely the absence of the body has taught the author to recognize its value even more, and to pay more attention to the symbolic value that sensory perceptions assume in the transference relationship between therapist and patient.