Staying in Touch with Affect: Maintaining Vital Access to the Body while Working Online

Abstract

Presented here is a verbatim session conducted online. The session integrates the ideas of Aline LaPierre’s therapeutic touch model into psychoanalytic practice. Allan Schore introduced LaPierre’s work in Psychologist/Psychoanalyst in 2003, arguing that, “it is time to reappraise the central role of the operations of the bodily self in psychopathogenisis and treatment” (p. 9). More specifically, he wrote, “Whatever the nature of the clinical issues, there is now solid evidence for the critical role of touch in human psychology and biology” (p. 9). This article presents a somatically informed, right hemispheric way of relating that enlivens and deepens the clinical process. Importantly, it presents a perspective that responds to Russell’s (2015) unease about the loss of functional equivalence as we move our face-to-face sessions online. In particular, with its focus on engaging affect at the somatic level, it addresses Russell’s concern about the loss of the fast paced, body-to body implicit processes, which she argues results in the loss of “the kind of holding environment that supports the in-dwelling of the psyche in the soma” (Bayles, 2016, p. 654).

Keywords:

• Online treatment
• affect
• touch
• identification
• intrapersonal relationality

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Mary Bayles

Mary Bayles, MSW, SEP, NAT, is a psychoanalyst and supervisor in Sydney, Australia. She is trained in both Somatic Experiencing and NeuroAffective Touch. She is the founding president of the Australian Chapter of IARPP and has a long time interest in and writes about the non-verbal aspects of therapeutic action.