Thursday, November 11th, the Institute partnered with PsiAN to present A Conversation with Hannah Zeavin PhD. Dr. Zeavin discused her book The Distance Cure: A History of Teletherapy, with Dr. Linda Michaels.
To view the program, CLICK HERE
| The Distance Cure: A History of Teletherapy is a transnational social history of therapies deployed beyond the classic consulting room. Psychotherapy across distance and time, from Freud’s treatments by mail to crisis hotlines, radio call-ins, chatbots and Zoom sessions. Zeavin addresses the many ways technology intertwines with mental health care and raises questions about the frame and the efficacy of psychotherapies. How do we think about technology as the “third” within the therapeutic encounter? |
| How does technology affect or impede empathy? Have we over-privileged the role of being in the same room theoretically? How does technology affect the relationships in these situations of what Dr. Zeavin terms “distanced intimacy”? She will enter into a conversation with Linda Michaels about these and many other questions about teletherapy. |
| A Lecturer in the Departments of English and History at the University of California, Berkeley, Dr. Zeavin is a faculty affiliate of the University of California at Berkeley Center for Science, Technology, Medicine and Society and on the Berkeley Center for New Media’s Executive Committee. Additionally, she is a visiting fellow at the Columbia University Center for the Study of Social Difference. Her first book, The Distance Cure: A History of Teletherapy from MIT Press was published in August 2021. She is at work on her second book, Mother’s Little Helpers: Technology in the American Family (MIT Press, 2023). |
