Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
Episode 35: Real Therapy, Virtually
152 Plays4 years ago
Fara and Grant speak with therapist and psychoanalytic candidate-in-training Hannah Weiss about therapy during the pandemic, video and in-person, our relationships with our bodies, and the future of psychoanalysis.
Read more:
Hannah Weiss: https://hannahweiss.org/index.html
Chicago Psychoanalytic Institute: https://chicagoanalysis.org
Recommended
Transcript
Virtual Therapy: Here to Stay?
00:00:03
Speaker
I mean, I think virtual is probably here to stay. So as long as we can have a dialogue about it and try to understand what it means choosing one or the other or both.
Meet Your Hosts: Farah White & Grant Brenner
00:00:13
Speaker
Hi, thanks for listening to doorknob comments. I'm Farah White. And I'm Grant Brenner. We are psychiatrists on a mission to educate and advocate for mental health and overall
Podcast Purpose and Common Misconceptions
00:00:22
Speaker
wellbeing.
00:00:22
Speaker
In addition to the obvious, we focus on the subtle, often unspoken dimensions of human experience, the so-called doorknob comments people often make just as they are leaving their therapist's office.
00:00:33
Speaker
We seek to dispel misconceptions while offering useful perspectives through open and honest conversation.
Introducing Hannah Weiss
00:00:40
Speaker
We hope you enjoy our podcast. Please feel free to reach out to us with questions, comments, and requests. We're here with Hannah Weiss, a psychotherapist in private practice in Chicago and a psychoanalytic candidate in training at the Chicago Psychoanalytic Institute.
00:00:55
Speaker
Today,
Hannah's Journey into Psychoanalysis
00:00:56
Speaker
we're going to talk about psychotherapy, virtual therapy versus in-person, what psychoanalytic therapy means to us today, and anything else that might come to mind. Welcome, Hannah. Thank you. Thank you for having me. I wonder if you would feel comfortable telling us a little bit about what drew you to the field, how it's been.
Is Psychoanalysis Still Relevant?
00:01:15
Speaker
Yeah, sure. Well, it's certainly been
00:01:17
Speaker
challenging this past, it's been almost a year and a half since COVID began. Primarily what drew me to the field is this sort of drive I have to explore things that are difficult to see. I've always been very curious and liked understanding how the mind works. And when I was in grad school, I took a class on psychoanalytic therapy and that's when I discovered that that was really what I was interested in primarily. So that's when I decided to begin training as a psychoanalyst.
00:01:47
Speaker
before you sort of went into the training, what was your impression sort of of cycling in general was it like?
Psychoanalysis vs. Behavioral Therapy
00:01:56
Speaker
I actually didn't even know that psychoanalysis still existed. So they have a marketing problem or they did in Chicago at least. My impression was that it was old, it was ancient, that people didn't practice it anymore. And I had a sort of picture in mind, you know, of Freud. So he was the founder and he would just be sitting behind the couch as a patient talks and saying very little.
00:02:23
Speaker
And actually I found that contemporary psychoanalysis can be quite different depending on who your analyst is, that it's more interactive and in the room and focused on the relationship.
Unconscious Motivations and Trauma
00:02:36
Speaker
So how would you market it?
00:02:38
Speaker
How would I market it? I think that one of the things that I've noticed in my work with patients is that those who really seem to value psychoanalysis are often people who haven't responded well to other treatments that are more surface level. Sometimes people go to treatment for a certain behavior or a symptom, and in behavioral approaches, they really address just the symptom. Let's say you are
00:03:06
Speaker
I don't know, pulling out your hair. They might have some sort of approach where they try to train you not to do that you know maybe I don't know do an alternate behavior instead or challenge the thought processes and if someone else's hair perhaps. Maybe yours.
00:03:26
Speaker
But that's a tip of my, good luck. But that's a behavioral approach. If you have a compulsive behavior, hair pulling is trichotillomania, right? I'll use the jargon, trichotillomania, which means sort of a compulsion or an urge to pull out hair. The behavioral approach would be like substitute that behavior with something else. Right.
00:03:51
Speaker
Snap a rubber band, use a fidget spinner, resist the urge as long as possible. What if that doesn't work? In psychoanalysis, there's an unconscious, so we assume that we have an unconscious mind and we're unaware of certain conflicts and fantasies and fears.
00:04:09
Speaker
hope in psychoanalysis is that we can get to the unconscious and what's driving this behavior and that takes a lot of work and a lot of time and there's a sort of intensity to the process.
Virtual Therapy: Changing Dynamics
00:04:22
Speaker
What might be an example of an unconscious, and sort of any of us could answer this question of course, but what might be an example of an unconscious reason for pulling hair out?
00:04:32
Speaker
I actually like this example. It came to mind maybe for good reason. We can analyze that. But I think about pulling hair too as a separation, right? One reason might be a separation of the hair from the body. And does that represent on some unconscious level loss, the attempt to master loss? That's just one idea that comes to mind for me. What about you? Well, within that example, then there's also a repetition, right? Right. Mastery, mastery of loss.
00:05:02
Speaker
My mind went biological that things like that, which would often be painful also have to be experienced as attention and release and somewhat pleasurable. And there may be like a biological factor that the way people experience discomfort also can be different. Like some people who might injure themselves by inflicting something like a cut on themselves would not necessarily feel it as painful in the same way, but that doesn't quite get at the unconscious meaning
00:05:33
Speaker
But I also know that when people who pull their hair out compulsively often have had trauma histories when they're younger. And so that type of self-directed behavior may be related to earlier developmental trauma. And I think too, it's interesting that this example is coming to mind because there is a sort of lack of body that we've experienced in this pandemic. And at least as therapists and analysts and psychiatrists
00:06:01
Speaker
we aren't in the room with our patients. So our bodies are not together. And I would wonder too, in engaging in that way with your body, pulling out your hair, if there's a sort of feeling of, oh, my body exists, I'm real. And you don't get that as much when you're not in the room.
00:06:19
Speaker
Yeah, I was thinking along lines like that with trauma, if something happened to the body, that there's a disconnection or a disassociation from the experience of having a body and the relationship with the body that is sort of suggested by someone who pulls out their hair too much.
00:06:38
Speaker
it might suggest to me to to consider what the relationship with the body is like. And how does that come up for people where you're not meeting in person and you you you don't really see the other person or feel their presence is fully. Maybe you're only seeing, you know, their their head and shoulders, you know, just thinking it can be difficult to and especially if doing phone sessions, if there are no visuals, you know, not being able to see any of that. Although I sometimes find that a phone session that I'm able to focus more
00:07:08
Speaker
on the words, uh, the thing that was hardest for me to get used to. And that's why I sometimes will use my phone, the picture of my face. I can drag it down to the corner and kind of cover it because that's something that I never gave that much thought to. And I really don't want to be giving it that much thought, like how I might look to the patient. And I find that
00:07:33
Speaker
It's sometimes a distraction. Yeah. Even now as we're talking, I mean, we're all on the screen and I unfortunately have to look at myself. I would prefer not to. Yeah. I think there's, there is something, you know, at a certain point we all probably have had to get over it. I used to hate to hear the sound of my own voice and I don't love seeing my reflection on the screen all the time, but there was this deep learning curve there.
00:08:02
Speaker
I'm chuckling because I admit I like seeing my image on the screen generally. And I kind of like hearing my own voice. Though I also like seeing other people and hearing them and listening. I think talking on the telephone often feels more connected in some ways.
Challenges and Fatigue in Virtual Therapy
00:08:22
Speaker
And in a way, it feels quote unquote more psychoanalytic to me, at least in traditional psychoanalysis where the person in therapy, the analysis and
00:08:32
Speaker
would be lying on a couch, not seeing the analyst and in a way that can really free people up because some people are very hyper focused on the other person's reactions to them. And so sometimes it can really allow much more space for fantasy and free associations to not be locked into this interpersonal visual system, I would say. And so for me, the phone often feels more intimate in some ways.
00:09:00
Speaker
Yeah, I agree with you. I found it difficult actually in the switch to screens. There were many people when they were in my office who either were laying down or at the very least where they weren't engaging in quite as much eye contact. There was a sort of natural rhythm to it that I think feels more natural in the room.
00:09:19
Speaker
Whereas if you're looking at a screen, it's just not as natural anymore. The screen's right in front of you. And I definitely found it difficult being looked at so intensely by patients. Technologically, when I'm using Zoom or any kind of video tool, though I don't use Zoom in my practice because it's not necessarily that secure, if you're making eye contact with the person, that means I'm looking right at the camera. And if I'm looking at the person's image,
00:09:47
Speaker
It means that when you're looking at me, my eyes are averted. But isn't that profound that actually we are not making eye contact and throughout this pandemic as we engage in video sessions, there is not one moment of direct eye contact.
00:10:02
Speaker
Right. Or what is the proxy for eye contact? I think like technologically, the camera would have to be like over the image of the person who's speaking. Like my phone actually is in the middle of the screen a little bit, but you know, they haven't solved that problem. But do you feel, do either of you feel eye contact when you're doing video sessions? Does it feel the same or do you feel something's missing? I definitely feel like something's missing in there.
00:10:31
Speaker
has been a lot of research about Zoom fatigue and screen fatigue. And one of the theories behind it is that there are diminished rewards from being with people on screen as opposed to in-person. It's just less gratifying, I guess. I don't know exactly like the physiology of it. Like oxytocin or something. Yeah, something like that, where it feels good to have someone walk into the office and sit down. It feels good to see them.
00:11:01
Speaker
And the separation also feels, I think, more final, like the person leaves my office, then I hear the outer door to the waiting room close. And I'm just like, it's a buttoner. It's not really that satisfying. Yeah, there is a greater separation when we're in our offices for both the patient.
00:11:23
Speaker
and not. Well, like you were saying about pulling out hair, there's a moment of sort of conventional separation where if there's a sort of a moment of loss when the person really leaves, I think when people hang up from a video call, it has a different kind of finality. But as you're saying, Farah, it's not accompanied by that sense of closeness that you feel when you're in person with someone and all the things that go along with it, which a lot of which are chemical and nonverbal.
00:11:52
Speaker
For patients who've experienced those early losses, say of an environment or a person, I think that sort of repetition becomes all the more profound, going to the screen or the phone and how sudden that was for people. A lot of people really need the in-person component for therapeutic reasons, though I've also found that a lot of people seem to do well without it, but it's not always so clear because people don't always clearly express their needs.
Patient Preferences: Virtual vs. In-Person
00:12:21
Speaker
Or know what they need.
00:12:22
Speaker
or know what they need, but a patient who's maybe really wants to meet in person but is reluctant to say it, for example. Do each of you find that if you haven't met with people in person, do you bring up what it means not to be meeting in person? Or if we're not able to because of COVID? Well, sure. And I've even noticed, and maybe two of you have noticed this too, it's meaningful.
00:12:48
Speaker
when I bring that up and with whom. I notice who I bring it up with sooner rather than later. And I wonder to myself sometimes why I haven't brought it up with certain people. So, but it's definitely something that I've talked about. Yeah, I think I have maybe a little bit of a different take on it because I offer all of my vaccinated patients the opportunity to meet in person if they want to. And sometimes it'll be like,
00:13:16
Speaker
two months of just phone or video sessions. And then I don't know what shifts, but they may want to come into the office. I probably do need to do a better job of saying, hey, what was going on that made you want to come in or not want to come in? Does something make you reluctant to ask? No, but I think I just get happy to see people. And maybe I want to believe that I don't want to assign so much meaning to it.
00:13:45
Speaker
because I feel like, logistically, it might put someone in a position where they feel like they have to share something they don't want to share.
Post-COVID Therapy Adaptations
00:13:52
Speaker
I think of that as the psychoanalytic dilemma, which is like whether to ask sort of the expected question. You know, what does it mean, X, Y, and Z? And a fair number of people, if I ask those questions, they'll sort of tease me about it.
00:14:07
Speaker
And I'd say a certain amount of time if I ask a question like that. If I feel like it's a cliche I do feel self conscious, and sometimes will mark myself consciousness with some sort of quip, like, I feel like a stereotypical psychoanalyst
00:14:23
Speaker
But was there a reason why now you wanted to meet in person or why did you choose now to ask this or share that I knew I thought you were going to ask that or oh that's that's like a psychologist question to ask and it's like well I take that as a compliment.
00:14:41
Speaker
I think I feel so steeped in my training right now because I'm a candidate that if I notice I feel embarrassed to ask or I want to preface it, I'll begin to wonder to myself, well, why do I feel embarrassed with this patient that I feel a need to say that? But I imagine if I was out of the training, I might do that more. Certain patients kind of not wanting to come back to in person or maybe not planning to.
00:15:09
Speaker
I guess we're not at the point, pandemic-wise, where we have to really look at what that means. But I think it's important to think about it, not just on, let's say, case-by-case basis, but what it really means for the field. Well, I certainly, I think, because I really haven't seen anyone in person for different reasons. I'm just playing it especially safe.
00:15:33
Speaker
But I am imagining a lot about what it's going to be like to be reunited with people in person. And reunited suggests that there's a disunion, even if we've continued to meet throughout the pandemic. I expect it's going to feel like a reunion to meet in person. And of course, friends feel like that. Or in any relationship, if you haven't seen someone for a while, even if you've been sort of talking on the phone or staying in touch or texting, when you see someone in person, it's a totally different thing.
00:16:03
Speaker
Yeah, I have seen a good number of my patients now in person after having not met in person for quite some time. And I've noticed a theme that's come up with many of my patients is this question of, will it feel different? What will be different? And even fantasies or fears about, has my office changed? Have I changed? I've had people wonder if I, no one can see my body. So did I get pregnant? It's really rich with fantasy, but it's been interesting, reuniting again.
00:16:33
Speaker
Have any of your patients expressed or shared any fantasies about what isn't seen? Certainly, even with the screen and we are in different environments. I know sometimes I practice from home, I think people can become excited or interested or afraid of what's going on behind the scenes. When they see you somewhere else, I think it stimulates that curiosity or the fear of the curiosity and then the avoidance of it.
00:17:02
Speaker
I think there's been a sort of general curiosity too about how I am, you know, during the pandemic and it's a shared experience. So we're all sort of going through it
Virtual Settings: New Boundaries
00:17:12
Speaker
together. And I think people have been concerned or questions about that. Like, are you okay? Like people will ask, how are you doing? It's like, no, really, how are you doing? In disasters, people feel some solidarity.
00:17:26
Speaker
Right. And before the pandemic, if someone had a question like that, unless there was some solid evidence there, you know, that was meaningful, I could wonder more about what that means that they were worrying that I wasn't okay. Whereas now there's a good reason. I mean, we are all in this together.
00:17:43
Speaker
though there still may be more unconscious reasons and the obvious surface reasons might undermine curiosity. When you were saying that there are things that people can't see, like you said, maybe I'm pregnant, and I thought, well, maybe from here down, like I'm a robot or something, I became aware, which people listening to the podcast won't be able to tell, but for Farah, I can only see your head.
00:18:09
Speaker
Sorry. Do you want me to sit up straight? Well, I just noticed that your head was just sort of resting on the bottom. Sorry, I'm just getting really comfy here. I also have some
00:18:20
Speaker
stuff in the background that I'm trying to hide. So strategically angled the camera, nothing that exciting. Well, I saw like a therapy New Yorker style cartoon of the Zoom session and it was a shot from above. And so it showed like this cone, like coming out from the camera and everything within the camera's view was impeccably clean. And then everything immediately to the side of the camera was just total mess. Yeah, basically what I'm saying.
00:18:49
Speaker
Yeah. Well, but, you know, I think the joke was also psychological which is like the therapist like we maybe people wonder if and maybe sometimes in some ways we do present a different persona as a therapist, though some therapists sort of let it hang out more others are more sort of manicured or
00:19:09
Speaker
managing of their persona. Probably over video, it's easier to do that. It's easier to choose what you disclose inadvertently. People can tell us. On the flip side, sometimes I learn a lot more about people by seeing where they are. I've noticed there's been a freedom for some people in not coming to my office. It's an opportunity to, I suppose literally and figuratively reposition themselves.
00:19:39
Speaker
And some people have taken more to laying down when they're not in my office or getting more comfortable. And I suppose the figurative part of that too is that there are some people who have become more comfortable sharing more, you know, when they're over the phone or screen.
00:19:54
Speaker
Well it's like also like a home visit it reminds me when you get to go to someone's home and you learn a lot more about them because sometimes when people come to the office right they can they can get themselves ready to go out and and then you know you get to meet people's cats and dogs and children and spouses and the boundaries are really
00:20:13
Speaker
different. And some people really keep, you know, like a very careful boundary around the environment. Other folks I've worked with, it's like someone opens the door and you know, you get to see a different like lens into their lives often. For sure. And I think that can be really great because it can mean someone, I guess, trusts you enough to show you where they are and what their home is like, but at the same time, and so you're sort of
00:20:43
Speaker
I guess, entering their environment in this different way. What I wonder is like, are there things that are left unsaid because of that you don't share the same space and maybe it doesn't feel as safe to talk about some of those day to day things. Like maybe they're not going to share about something that happened when their spouse is in the next room. Well, for sure that's been explicit.
00:21:09
Speaker
Like, I don't know if I can talk or, you know, well, I'm not sure if they can hear me or let's talk about that next time. And the literal intrusions into the therapeutic space, you know, other people or sounds, noises, at least when you're in the office, you sort of have a bit more control over that.
00:21:27
Speaker
I think the question is conventionally, probably your most psychoanalysts, not to overgeneralize, but conventionally, most psychoanalysts would probably say it's better to meet in person in an office and keep the environment sort of contained and the frame consistent, meaning the setting of the therapy doesn't change very much. And then against the backdrop, drop of that unchanging therapy, you're supposed to be able to do better psychoanalytic work.
00:21:57
Speaker
But on the other hand, some of my experiences have been so much richer getting a window into people's lives.
Flexible Practices for Virtual Therapy
00:22:03
Speaker
I can't help but think some kind of hybrid model maybe is best. And that being so rigid or doctrinaire, we may be excluding stuff from awareness that could be helpful. And maybe that has to do with our own anxieties.
00:22:17
Speaker
in needing to maintain that sort of frame. I hear that from a lot of psychoanalysts that they would prefer the sort of steadiness of the in-office frame. See, that doesn't speak to me personally as much. I think because my background is different. For example, I've done disaster work and I've done mental health work in the field.
00:22:38
Speaker
in South Asia, in Louisiana. I've done counseling, you know, by hospital beds, in shelters, and I feel, you know, and in cafes sometimes, and I feel like I carry my shell with me, you know, like a snail carries their shell on their back.
00:22:54
Speaker
So I feel like my office is more intangible. But when I'm in my actual office, I do feel in some ways more at home because it has all my little toys and all my little tchotchkes and, you know, my familiar things. At first, it was hard for me to because I have a very different home and work life.
00:23:15
Speaker
energetically, I would say. And so my office was a place that was really serene. I chose everything that went into it and felt really comfortable there as a clinician. And I thought it would be impossible to recreate that at home when I can kind of hear footsteps or dogs barking or, you know, whatever. I also don't really love the idea of headphones because I don't wear them when I'm
00:23:45
Speaker
seeing patients in person. So I felt like it would be weird to have them on with patients on screen. So I do think that I've kind of learned to do what Grant was saying is like be the snail that carries the shell. And I think that the one thing that is great about that, that maybe I would have never, I would have never learned to do it otherwise.
Rethinking Psychoanalytic Environments
00:24:09
Speaker
And it enables me to work without interruption because I now can work if I'm
00:24:16
Speaker
on the road or even from my car, which I could have never imagined, but now I can pull over and talk to a patient and feel really present. It reminds me of pastoral counseling, where you can sort of, you can counsel people anywhere. It's a different mindset. I'm wondering what you think about the more traditional psychoanalytic
00:24:36
Speaker
sort of argument or whether you also feel sort of more flexibility and whether you think there's any kind of cultural or generational differences. Because I don't know that everyone sees psychotherapy the same way that traditionally trained psychoanalytic thinkers do. Yeah, I mean, I think it probably depends on the Institute.
00:24:59
Speaker
that you're looking at and the people there. I think for me, something that was difficult is that because I'm in training and then it was such a big shift going to online work, one of the difficulties is that because there is the lack of consistency sometimes, if the frame keeps changing, it's hard to know what the meaning of that is.
00:25:19
Speaker
I think in having the constancy of the office and meeting in the office, I do think there's some validity to sort of maintaining that constant so that anything else that shifts, we can imagine it's not related to a change that's occurred, at least with the environment. I don't know, maybe that's a sort of old school way of thinking.
00:25:44
Speaker
You know I wonder if there's a like a meta frame, like a higher order frame which doesn't shift, even if the background changes, because traditionally you might think oh why do you have a different background today, and it's like, because I'm at an Airbnb because my kids are camp. Well why now, it's like that doesn't have any psychoanalytic meaning.
00:26:05
Speaker
you know, in the way that you're suggesting, which can feel like a mismatch or misunderstanding. If a therapist sort of insists that something must mean something, and you're quite sure that it doesn't, you know, that can really feel intrusive. So you have to kind of adjust. But I still wonder if there's something that's more consistent that's intangible, though.
00:26:27
Speaker
Well, like a mindset or I'm reminded, I don't quite work this way, but I'm sure we've all heard this idea in our professional training that you act very flat as a therapist. Like, in other words, you keep your personality kind of tamped down and you're not too expressive. You don't show too much of your real personality. And that way, by comparison, you can, what's the right word, you know, make inferences
00:26:53
Speaker
about the other person. So if I always act like a quote unquote blank screen, then I can make better guesses about the, the other person's personality, because I know how I'm behaving.
Virtual Reality: The Future of Therapy?
00:27:05
Speaker
But what you miss is maybe people react to a therapist acting like a blank screen.
00:27:12
Speaker
Yeah, there's no, I mean, there's no ability to be a blank screen. There's always an interaction. And so whether you act flat or you are yourself and you bring in, you know, a human warmth, oh, Grant, you disappear. He's a blank screen. He's a blank screen. That was it. Now we can't. Yeah, I turned my video off for a second. But it wasn't blank. It had my name. That's true. Still, there was no face. It was different.
00:27:38
Speaker
maybe as we're wrapping up, how do we see the future of psychoanalysis? Is that something to think about also? Because maybe in some ways, as with some of the other things our experience during COVID has really forced a lot of therapists to use virtual therapy. But I wonder if in other ways, what are our thoughts about the future of psychoanalysis?
00:28:00
Speaker
I mean, I think virtual is probably here to stay. I would hope that analysts, therapists, I hope we are thoughtful about when and how we choose to use it because I think if we're not careful, both in-person and virtual can be used defensively and that ultimately is not the best for the patient. So as long as we can have a dialogue about it and try to understand what it means choosing one or the other or both.
00:28:25
Speaker
I think that's hopefully the way to go. Um, it will probably end up being part of that initial sort of matchup. You know, sometimes I'm on a few different listeners and it'll be like someone is looking for someone to meet in person or someone is looking to, but they're open to virtual people might have an idea.
00:28:48
Speaker
of what's right for them in terms of it's kind of like, do you want to work with a therapist to have a certain gender? But I think it's going to become like anything else. We have a lot more choices because barring licensing issues in different states and things like that, there's many, many more therapists from which to choose, from whom to choose.
00:29:10
Speaker
Now, if they had technology where you could actually do true virtual reality therapy, where you wore 3D goggles and the patient wore 3D goggles, and maybe it even had some kind of immersive suit the way some video games are, I'm curious what each of you thinks. Would you be interested in trying true immersive VR therapy?
00:29:34
Speaker
It's sort of like when our body is going to be completely irrelevant. We will live in an immersive sort of virtual world. I mean, I find that frightening. I don't know what you do.
00:29:48
Speaker
Yeah, I don't know that I'd be such. I mean, is there smell vision? Let's just stick with sort of visual and auditory. Instead of staring at a screen, would you rather have a three-dimensional representation and stereo sound? Would that cause, say, less Zoom fatigue? Or would you feel more of a sense of telepresence? Could you argue that it's better therapeutically
00:30:12
Speaker
if you're doing virtual therapy anyway. I'm not sure how the smell thing would work because the technology I don't think is quite there for for chemistry. Yeah. But certainly there's studies that that chemistry is important for connecting. I don't know if I like the idea of a VR like analytic office. I would probably have some really weird design like I don't know
00:30:36
Speaker
Probably not for me. You could make it look just like your own office. That would be even weirder. You could just sample it. What about you, Hana? Gosh, I don't think I could see myself doing it. I would try it. I'd like to experiment with that. We don't think therapists are going to be rushing for true VR therapy. I think it could be disconcerting for patients to feel like someone's there, but they're not really there.
00:31:00
Speaker
could recreate a lot of stuff. Maybe, maybe. I think our culture just isn't ready for true VR or augmented reality. I think eventually, though, it'll probably be how a lot of things are conducted.
00:31:16
Speaker
because it's probably superior in a lot of ways to 2D screen therapy. If we were doing market research, the investors are not jumping to do this.
Session Wrap-Up and Contact Info
00:31:30
Speaker
Same thing in the workplace. You'd think that work from home in a lot of ways probably would be more effective in a true immersive work environment. That's like a science fiction thing right now.
00:31:41
Speaker
Well, and then how do you tell the difference between reality and this virtual reality? Are they going to start to blend together? This is like a black mirror. Well, there's a lot of science fiction about this, and you could present yourself differently. You could change your gender. You could change your perceived ethnicity. You probably could even change your accent. You could change your voice. Can you clone yourself and really make analysis scalable? Clone yourself.
00:32:09
Speaker
Can I just be with three different patients at a time? I think you would love that if you could clone yourself in an AI. Yeah. And then I could be controlling. I could be like the wizard. That's sometimes a question I've asked people. If they could clone themselves, how do they think they would get along with themselves? That's a great question. I mean, I think really what you're getting to then too is how do you get along with yourself?
00:32:38
Speaker
there's really onto. Yeah. I'm very interested in people's relationships with themselves in a very concrete way.
00:32:47
Speaker
It sort of gets to the hair pulling again. Well, when I think of the body, I think of the body. Yeah, I will often ask that sort of what is your relationship with your body like? Or would you like to have a better relationship with your body, which probably isn't a psychoanalytic question. Because it's biased. It's biased. Yeah, if you say would you like to have a better relationship with your body? Yeah, versus like, what is your relationship like?
00:33:12
Speaker
Yeah, you're putting a bit of your thoughts about that in your opinion. Yeah, I know it's radical. Farrah, would you like to share any thoughts and conclusion?
00:33:25
Speaker
No, I just want to thank Hannah so much for joining us today. This is a lot of fun. Thank you. Is there a place that people can find you if they're interested in, I don't know, learning more about what you do or? Oh, that's kind. Yeah, I have a website. It's hannahweiss.org, H-A-N-N-A-H-W-E-I-S-S.org. And then I'm pretty involved at the Chicago Sigma Analytic Institute and the Society. So if you look those pages off,
00:33:54
Speaker
You can find me through there as well. Thanks for having me. This has been great. It was a pleasure. Thanks for listening. Thanks for listening to Dornop comments. We're committed to bringing you new episodes with great guests. Please take a moment to share your thoughts. We'd love it if you could leave a rating and review on your favorite podcast platform. You can also find us on Instagram at Dornop comments.
00:34:17
Speaker
Remember, this podcast is for general information purposes only and does not constitute the practice of psychiatry or any other type of medicine. This is not a substitute for professional and individual treatment services and no doctor patient relationship is formed. If you feel that you may be in crisis, please don't delay in securing mental health treatment. Thank you for listening.