ABSTRACT
This chapter examines some of the general psychological aspects of telephoning, including the magical character that the telephone may assume in certain cases and its relationship to the search for mastery and the role that aggression may play in telephoning. These also include: the bearing of object relations on telephoning in general and compulsive telephoning in particular and the way in which telephone behavior may relate to the Oedipus complex and the formation of superego structures. The chapter presents data from the analysis of a patient who used the telephone extensively in the service of a voyeuristic perversion. It discusses the psychological factors involved in the use of the phone as an adjuvant in therapy and in the operation of hotline social services. The frequent connection between telephoning and the wish to obtain magically, often by way of identification, mastery over one’s environment needs to be traced to its genetic roots.
