4 May 2016

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Scheduling

I’ve had more than one client ask over the last while whether I’ve contemplated switching from my current mode of scheduling — which is either person-to-person, over the phone, or via email — to an online model which would effectively cut out the interaction in favour of convenience. Now, beginning an argument with I’m no technophobe, but… might indicate that indeed I am such a thing. Rather, I have a couple of ways to answer this.

First, standing outside my practice, I can certainly see how online scheduling might provide advantages; aside from convenience it’s also fast. If I were booking time with an accountant or personal trainer, this would probably be a handy feature. That said, psychotherapy — particularly psychodynamic psychotherapy — is about the importance of interpersonal interaction: how its use or misuse affects us, in the present or accumulatively from the past. This isn’t to say that talking about whether next Thursday at 1pm is, technically, therapy. But how we negotiate that otherwise small detail with someone else — the interaction — potentially is. Life is, after all, a series of small interactions; how we process our amassed experiences, in how we see ourselves and our place in the world, is no small matter.

Psychotherapy is the last place where you want to experience the impersonal.