Here is the verbatim transcript of the complete conversation between Lou and Arnon Rolnick, PhD, about Sherry Turkle’s memoire The Empathy Diaries (2021) and the debate about online therapy.
For the complete video see: https://youtu.be/6OId-0QDFys
To listen to the podcast on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/6K8byq8UAs85lnVcSAj4DJ
Lou Agosta (Chicago, USA): Today’s conversation is entitled Reclaiming Empathy in Video Conversation: An Imaginary dialogue with Sherry Turkle. Today I’m having a conversation with my colleague and friends Arnon Rolnick, PhD, Psychology. I will let him introduce himself momentarily. Just once thought upfront – his commitment is to integrating biofeedback, psychology, and technology. He says – and I believe it is accurate and true – that he is incapable of being indifference. His exuberance, enthusiasm commitment and empathy are an inspiration to me, and I believe will be one to the listening, viewing audience. Great to see you!
Arnon Rolnick (Tel Aviv, Israel): Great to see you and thank you for such a nice introduction so I want to share with you my almost 30 years of effort to integrate Psychotherapy Psychology and Technology. As a clinical psychologist I’ve been baffled by the power of those who characterize life in the 21 century. On one hand, technology and science are providing us with better ways to live; yet, on the other hand, people are suffering more. It is as thought technology helps us to neglect our selves. And before I will say a few words about my work in this area, I want to say why she [Sherry Turkle] is so important. She was a Pioneer and a guru.
Lou: A pioneer and a guru
Arnon: Yes – I will say a few words about my work and then the issue of empathy will lead us all the way. So it was her book The Second Self where she defines this computer as more than just the tube but part of our everyday personal and psychological lives. She looks at how the computer reflects on ourselves and our relationships with other. She’s claiming the technology defines the way we think and act. Turkle’s book, which was really the first one in this area, allowed us to view and re-evaluate our own relationship with technology. This was her first book and this was that the first moment that I thought “Wow!” interesting. And then came my own work as a psychologist. I felt that there is some gap between what happened in the meeting [between therapist and client] and then the person is going home and he either forgets or doesn’t do I what we decided he was do so. I thought we would like to do what in CBT they called homework I don’t like the name “home work,” but most people know
Lou: Cognitive Behavioral Therapy [CBT} and assignments there are sometimes assignments. Back to you
Arnon: II will even appreciate it, Lou, if sometimes my English is not so clear, you will help the audience to understand my accent. So it was sometimes early in 1995 – see how old am I – I think I work with biofeedback I thought why don’t you give that the patient not only a biofeedback but also a CD that you can work at home and we call it “De – Stress” and we sold it in Boots – you know the British Pharmacy [Boots the Chemist] and I so I thought that should be there the killer [“killer app”] that should be the most important thing you give to the world and apparently it didn’t work
Lou: You send the patient home with a CD and there is an interactive media here – so already we’re in the online digital world and the patience or the clients or the individuals struggling – so what happens? They still are not that engaged? Explain it – what is the take away here?
Arnon: I will explain it – a little bit later when I speak about “Beating the Blues” – then the company – the British company hired me to help them develop already for the internet – first for the first CD – the program of cognitive behavioral therapy to help the patient overcome depression and anxiety. I thought again it would be wonderful idea – after seeing the patient, he will use this CD. The company thought differently. She said we don’t need a therapist. Just we will give them this program: eight 45-minute sessions and they will be cured.
Lou: And so you become [in]dispensable – you think maybe this is not going to work exactly as the British UK publishing company is imagining. But at some point, if the once the therapist, the psychotherapist, has designed the assignments, we no longer need you. So keep in touch! Have a great life good! What happened?
Arnon: What happened is very interesting. There were about eight good [unintelligible] that it works. I felt strange – it was a good program – I was part of it but could it really replace the human element? Later on it was found that the picture is more complicated. It works well only when there was a nurse involved her and she helped them to do the program so the nurse…
Lou: Let me just to interrupt you here. it sounds like the human element – so you’re already dealing with the human element and the technological elements whether it’s a CD or whether you know it goes fully online in the cloud as we have it today and it turns out what turns out we have the psychotherapist step aside and it [the nurse] turns out perhaps to be the replacement therapist.
But we’re just calling him or her a nurse shows up – and we suspect the human touch – the therapeutic Alliance if you will – the Rapport between human beings may be a hidden common factor
Arnon: Exactly. But this will allow me later after you will introduce your work and that will help me to divide the Psychotherapy into two main camps: the technique camps and the relationship camps. And I will talk about it only after you will tell us about your work about empathy
Lou: That sounds like a good segue for me to say something about empathy and we’re going to do it – so hold that thought: there’s the relationship camp and the tips and technique camp. And so hold that though – and so back to me – thank you! I appreciate the shout out – who the heck am I anyway? One claim to fame that may be more than one but is to have authored three peer-reviewed books on empathy, starting with A Rumor of Empathy – in effect, virtual volumes one and two and then Empathy Lessons and Empathy in the Context of Philosophy. My PhD from the University of Chicago began with a dissertation on Empathy and Interpretation – so I’m not going to give the storied, complicated history of the distinction empathy at the time I was a graduate student. It’s a matter of public record, my dissertation adviser, Stephen Toulmin, was being psychoanalyzed by the colleagues here in Chicago I don’t know the name of his analyst – he may have told me – but Kohut was innovating in the matter of empathy and his colleagues Michael Franz Basch, Arnold Goldberg, Ernie Ernest S Wolf were innovating in the matter of Self Psychology – and is there anything to this concept empathy or is it just cumbaya stuff? Really what’s the intellectual Providence? And it made a great dissertation for young graduate student and it is something meaningful to engage and so fast forward – I am not going to tell you about all of these books – they’re there’s actually available from your local online book seller. What I propose to do is provide really – no kidding – the one minute empathy training. You can actually do it in a minute. Now there are some conditions and qualifications – and so here it is: Drive out – get rid of – reduce – drive out things such as aggression, hostility, bullying, cynicism, resignation, bad language, politics in the pejorative negative sense – you know we are political and often times it doesn’t bring out the best [in us] – drove those things out – and empathy naturally comes forth – people are naturally empathic – people want to be empathic – and will be so if given half a chance. So that’s it! That’s the training: get rid of the negatives and empathy shows up in the space of relatedness. I pause for breath. I see you have a question.
Arnon: Being also trained in psychoanalysis you’ll clearly represent the Kohutian self psychology view – people are good – but what about the Kleinians? How can we get rid of our aggression
Lou: Well, thank you! I mean thank you: I mean human beings are naturally empathic; human beings are also naturally aggressive. We are a complicated species; and I have no easy answer. The difficult answer is that often times hostility and aggression are reactive. If you want to see somebody get angry – if you yourself get angry – if I find myself angry or even enraged, [then] one good question to ask myself – yourself – the people in the listening or viewing audience: who hurt your feelings? who perpetrated a dignity violation? or where did you not get the empathy and respect you deserved? cuz if you want to get a person angry, hurt their feelings – say something devaluing about their parents. It’s not going to go well. If you say something bad, it could get messy it’s just I have no [easy answer] – I mean we acknowledge the contribution of Melanie Klein. [Klein was] an incredible innovator. Let’s talk to some children. Freud’s innovating – Anna’s innovating – he’s got some ideas about infantile sexuality. Melanie Klein comes along – herself kind of a tortured genius in her own way – [she says] let’s talk to some children – and play therapy is invented. What a breakthrough – so I don’t know – there’s a lot of room for disagreement here but I’ve also seek some over lap and common ground. Hostility and aggression: there are a lot of things that can cause it. I mean, some of it may indeed be in it and species-specific. Nevertheless, who gets their feelings hurt and who experiences an empathy break down [or] a dignity violation. I claim that’s a candidate answer and so I may continue or you can get follow up
Arnon: So I think I’m responsible for the digression.
Lou: A digression but a productive one – so we finished the one minute empathy training; and there’s a lot more to be said about empathy – here right now. [However] We’ll come back to that. I’m going to segue – I think usefully – I’m going to begin a conversation about the contribution of I believe it would be: Madame Professor Dr Sherry Turkle, PhD, social psychology MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology). On a personal – the occasion is – I’m going to wave the book – [Lou holds up Turkle’s book, The Empathy Diaries, on the on-camera version of this conversation for YouTube] here her Memoir is published The Empathy Diaries (2021); and there she is as a child of tender age in the 1950s and the 1960s, coming up on the residential part of Long Island. The parents [actually] grandparents are Holocaust Survivors. They escaped Eastern Europe; and her mom marries a man named Mr. Zimmerman. Something is immediately strange – an unconventional something comes out. He’s performing certain kinds of I should say weird experiments that end up sounding like the work done by Mary Main and John Bowlby on attachment [the blank face gesture]. He’s leaving the kid – the young Sherry, the kid – forgive me, Professor Turkle, of tender age – alone in her room, .and letting her cry your eyes out. This guy has gotta go. The mom divorces Zimmerman and marries Milton Turkle, who has issues of his own, but two other children come along, her younger siblings. And here’s the – here’s the empathic moment – here’s the moment of the break down of empathy. At home she’s “Sherry Turkle’; [but] at school, somehow given this bureaucracy, she’s a Sherry Zimmerman. Now in our time, this is second about to be now third quarter 2021, blended families what’s the issue? It’s somehow devaluing, stigmatizing, divorce- you know, the feminist Revolution is occurring but divorce is still an issue one in this community – it is a Jewish community – non observant – living in genteel poverty – coming up in a kind of genteel poverty. Here’s the problem: [pretending to be Sherry’s parents]: “Sherry, you’re not allowed to talk about it. You’re not allowed to talk about the fact that your last name really is Turkle but at school, it’s Zimmerman.” Holy mackerel! It’s a two-tone elephant in the room. It’s [confronting] and so here is my short review: this is a great memoire. It is in many ways a page-turner. I was engaged, and I’ll say just a little bit more about that [soon], and it is also entitled The Empathy Diaries, [but] it might be also [be] entitled The Breakdown of Empathy [diaries], because it gives an account of what Sherry has to survive to reclaim for Humanity. It goes well – she’s smart – her parents tell her or grandparents tell her: “Look, you are not going to typing class.” This is amazing – this is the 1950s. If she learns how to type, she will end up in the secretarial pool. “No, Sherry, you are going to be in the front of the class. You are going to be the teacher” They don’t let they refuse to let her do housework. “Read!” they say. I heard something similar in a kind of weird way. This is a way of improving one’s life and one’s humanity and of getting some empathy. She goes to MIT. She meets – she goes back and forth for a while. She ends up at the University of Chicago about a couple of years before I was there. So it is a page turner for me, cuz they’re she is in Social Science 122 – sitting in the classroom – Social Sci 122 – and in comes Professor Bruno Bettelheim. He brings his straight back wooden chair; puts it on the low stage; and the students, who are trying to speak truth to power, give it to him, he gives it to them back – [Bettelheim is] the author of so many books: Love is Not Enough, the empathy fortress, [oops, I mean], The Empty Fortress, The Children of the Dream – over to you for a digression – insert your story here – he goes and visits a Kibbutz for a few months and says a few things which become controversial – you grew up there – tell me –
Arnon: I was born in Kibbutz and I was there raised there in this unique type of experiment – experiment – experiment – and you know what? We still don’t know that result of the experiment. What I mean is that we develop in so many ways and how many of us became leaders in various areas but we also have some pain and maybe it has been in his own way. May I take the leave now?
Lou: You have the conk shell –
Arnon: I want to say that again Sherry began with computers and she was fascinated with computers in particular and slowly she changed her ideas about the problems with computers – for example, she has many books – but I speak about two of them – both have explored how technology is changing the way we communicate – in particular, she raised concerns about the way in which organic social interaction can be degraded through constant exposure to lose every meaningful exchange with artificial intelligence. I will speak about artificial intelligence later on. In [Sherry’s book] Reclaiming Conversation, which is the book just before the one you mentioned
Lou: Reclaiming Conversation [Lou hold sup the cover on camera]
Arnon: She is arguing – she is gathering data from schools [and] companies [and] families – she says: we forgot [how] to speak with each other. We [are] all the time doing it via devices – we type – we send SMS – but we don’t talk and that’s led her to the interview that we will talk [about] later on where she kind of arguing – and maybe you will express it better – that online therapy is something completely different from psychoanalysis – and we will talk about this [more later] – but let me come back to this distinction between the two camps – and I will try to explain how the internet when it entered into the Psychotherapy world how it affected the two camps in different ways. So let’s begin – what are the two camps? The technique camp and the relationship. And everybody who knows Psychotherapy – you know that there is the group that thinks that their relationship is (a) very important aide in understanding the problems of the patient and (b) in maybe curing. Now you know that the earlier relationship with the parental figure is very important and this might be reflected later on in the relationship with therapist so that that camp is clearly or might be worried or interested about how does online therapy work. It seems like you want to comment and talk or should I continue?
Lou: – Well I have some comments I mean I think you hit the nail on the head so to speak in that the book you refer to – Reclaiming Conversation – she launches a Jeremiad – she is on a tear – you know, remember the Prophet Jeremiah in the Hebrew Bible? He was angry about something – we’re talking about anger – and it’s not clear whose feelings got hurt – but the feelings of the people at the dinner table where dinner conversation and conversations between friends are interrupted by beeping, buzzing, alerting smartphones – she is on a rant that we have got what amounts to acquire attention deficit – it’s not like we were born ADD or ADHD – amphetamine-based interventions will not help, because it is acquired through the number of interruptions that – so she’s, you know, [on a tear] and that’s the immediate trigger if you will, which, I believe, you’re expressing – what I would say is you are then tracing the conversation in the direction of online therapy – and it’s because – I mean – it’s now, you know, we’re emerging from this pandemic – the positivity right here in Chicago – hopefully – fingers crossed – we are jinxed now, I said, but – let us not do magical thinking. The positivity rate in Chicago is last week was .6 per cent and I had said the pandemic is at least temporarily over when it hits .5% but on other places it’s 6% and 10% and the struggle continues and we are really not going to go into it and there is a conversation about technology which we are not going to go into – technology can be used for great good and there can be big issues with it. That’s the point I wanted to make. She launches a Jeremiad – back over to you.
Arnon: We spoke about the relationship camp and how they acted to [towards] the Internet and I mentioned the technique camp – this camp who believes that what changes people’s behavior and thought and emotion is: we should give them technique. It could be cognitive behavioral technique – it could be emotion-focused therapy – it could be hypnotic technique.
Lou: You are not anxious or depressed – you just lack skill – that’s an enormous over-simplification, but there may be some useful techniques that can be improved and manage one’s anxiety and depression in a downward Direction
Arnon: Yes, and I should have made [note] that part of my research has dealt with this CBT techniques and I’m not I’m not in any way against it [unintelligible] Now what happened when the Internet entered the picture? Beating the Blues
Lou: Beating the Blues – I’ve got the name of the British company – we give them a shout out if they still exist: Beating the Blues – sounds good.
Arnon: But there is today ten thousand applications programs trying to do what beating the blues did, and it’s amazing how people are still trying to help or be helped by online application. Now just a the beginning of June there is a big article in the New York Times about an application called something –BOT – Webot – something – and it says that this application is working so well that one cannot differentiate if the bot – this machine – is a human being or behind it [a computer] or in fact, they are using a some engines like Google is doing now and – has developed Meena – a computer or machine –
Lou: A system of hardware-software stuff – Meena –
Arnon: That passed the tutor test –
Lou: The Turing test – Allen Turing – can I tell the difference between – in a conversational exchange between someone who supposedly hidden in a room or a machine or a device the Turing test and it turns out – we think – natural language has fallen to a technology that we now have technologies that can simulate natural a conversation with another human being the debate continues
Arnon: The debate continues and it is interesting to note that Sherry Turkle was married to one of [the members of] the group that developed Eliza. Eliza is another very early program that used Rogerian concepts to try to imitate Psychotherapy. Of course it was by far more simple. But let’s go back to the technique camps and a lot of effort to get rid of the psychologist I do at what Sherry Turkle says “the robotic moment.” She has a very strong anxiety – or she’s afraid that this artificial intelligence idea making – how can I say? – It’s dangerous to our humankind
Lou: Humanity – yes – yes –
Arnon: Humanity – I spoke about the technique camp and they’re mistaken direction; and I agree with Sherry [as] she speaks a lot about the dangers in this robotics [approach]. Oops, my chair almost fell.
Lou: If you disappear off camera, we will await your return. Maybe I can pick up the thread usefully at this point and a segue to the immediate occasion where you called me a few weeks ago and you said: “Hey, you know, let us have a conversation about her concerns and objections. I mean, she’s got some energy for this matter. She publishes – and I’m going to quote the publication that catalyzed our back-and-forth conversation: Afterward – here’s the title: “Afterword: Reclaiming Psychoanalysis: Sherry Turkle in Conversation With the Editors of Psychoanalytic Perspectives,” Volume 14: 2017 in this one and in this article, she raises a number of serious objections about the very possibility performing online therapy and she makes the case for co-presence. What I want to say at this point is –
[Video freezes and Internet connection is lost – connection is restored]
Arnon: We had some problems – we don’t know where was it – I don’t hear – you are on mute – we can we use this moment – I don’t know what exactly happened
Lou: I’m so I’m just going to pick it up I’m going to pick it up at “Afterword Reclaiming Psychoanalysis: Sherry Turkle in Conversation With the Editors of Psychoanalytic Perspectives
[[Video is frozen again – and connection lost]]
Lou: You were frozen
Arnon: You were frozen also
Lou: Things like this happen
Arnon: And it happens in online conversations – just a moment – and the question – how the therapist and the patient react to this? One could be completely angry – the patient – or the therapist could be: I’m not psychotherapy online anymore or we could use it
Lou: I mean you might reboot the router too for that matter – that could make a difference – 3, 2, 1 – the name of the article in Psychoanalytic Perspectives, Volume 14, year 2017: “Afterword: Reclaiming psychoanalysis: Sherry Turkle in Conversation With the Editors of Psychoanalytic Perspectives” – and in this – I must say – this was 2017 – I listened before the pandemic – then she denounces – I would say it’s not too strong a word to say she speaks in a devaluing way about online therapy, and [she] considers that psychoanalysis is missing the opportunity to emphasize the presence [of] the being together in the physical space – and all of the issues that occur there, which I will shortly enumerate – and what I really want to emphasize here is that there are at least three objections that she has: she says, lookit, online, to make eye contact with another person, you have to look at the green dot [the “camera on” LED]. I’m looking at the green dot. And it looks like I’m looking directly at you but when I look at Arnon’s eyes, I’m actually looking away from the green dot. So it’s not like sometimes, if you take a step back, it’s not clear where you are looking, but in person there’s a kind of code presence which is makes also, I think, an interesting but perhaps questionable point – so I want to be an honest broker here and charitable – who makes the point what starts out as being better than nothing – key term: “better than nothing” – in it pandemic, you can’t meet in person. So it is so, as she acknowledges in a podcast in July 2020, at the height of the pandemic here in the States, you can’t go to visit in person. It doesn’t work – you can’t – it’s impossible – it’s forbidden – and when we get back at someday out of the pandemic, from which we are (arguably) emerging at this time, the problem is (she sees) is that there will be friction and resistance to meeting in person where our fullest Humanity, if you will, empathy in the sense of being present with another human being in the same physical space embodied in a physical way. And so being “better than nothing” becomes “better than everything,” “the best of all” in so many words. And, finally, well those are her two points, and she says psychoanalysis may be missing a great opportunity here to take a stand and then she talks about a number of issues including [incomplete thought] – but she doesn’t say, you know, how to use the couch online – the couch – lie back on the couch – free associate – I’ve seen people who lie back on the couch and immediately have a breakthrough. They think of things which they were aware of – that they have not really been unaware of them – but we’re just kind of shoved back in there you know in their consciousness -in their inner sanctum, and all the sudden lie back and relax a little, and, oh, my God, I remember this or that about parents, about friends, about current relationships that they had not been aware of; so it can be a powerful tool and how does that work online? It doesn’t come up in this particular article. I pause for breath.
Arnon: The issue – is that the real psychoanalysis – is that typical discussion in psychoanalysis for many years – and now when Sherry Turkle says this is not psychoanalysis, speaking of online therapy – she is repeating and doing what many people did years ago before when the question was being on the couch or not being on the couch or sitting front face-to-face was considered not psychoanalysis
L: Somehow it was not echt – not genuine or authentic enough
Arnon: Yes, it was not the real classical Freudian in the day – and also the question should it be five times a week or three times a week – so psychoanalysis all the years is it the real thing or not the real thing and in this way I look on Sherry Turkle context can be partly understood – old psychoanalysis – is it true or false – in the 1950s when people said can you do psychoanalysis via the phone there were articles that said, you can do it but it is only supportive therapy – so what I am trying to say is the relationship camp was very much obsessed with the question was it the right thing as regular therapy or not regular therapy – so what I am saying is it is clearly different but it might be interestingly different – we might even find some advantage and learn a little bit what works in psychotherapy – for example, now when we are talking to one another, is it the content, my interpretation or is it my fault my visual appearance, which might be even bigger than what we you would seeing if you are in the end and I turn. You can see my face – my bird [beard] – my eyes – and like that so, and look. For example, I can do now this [Arnon zooms in and out with the camera] I’m going backward and then zooming
Lou: Amazing – we are gong to zoom in – we are literally zooming – and so may I jumping in at this point, because you raised a number of questions – now this is now not Professor Turkle (Sherry) – this is Lou Agosta: We may usefully have a phenomenology of presence – of online presence – just as we have the philosopher Merleu-Ponty talking about embodiment and a number of researchers [on the subject]. There is need for that, because the image is different than the physical presence – sometimes – it’s – it’s just different – it’s not better – it’s not worse – it may be richer in some sense and then less dimensional in another sense – and so, you know. I mean I could see – she doesn’t call for this, but she might usefully do so. The second idea: take a transcript of an in-person psychotherapy session and take a transcript of an online session. What’s the delta [between the online and the in-person]? How could you tell? Now the Internet blows up as it did a moment ago in our conversation, then you know we’re online. If the patient comes in and says, well the traffic was horrible, then you know you’re on the ground. But remove those deltas – remove those considerations – I suggest that in most cases – but interesting ones may not be on the list of most cases – one could not tell the difference, because therapy is basically a conversation – it lives in language – but [unintelligible] what about those instances [that are] new forms of Freudian slips. An anecdote: I met a new patient I had a second meeting with the individual – we use some version of Zoom – she gets up – the device is moving around the apartment – she goes to the kitchen – goes to the oven and says “pardon me, I got something in the oven” I am thinking – this is now would not be in the transcript – my thought would not be in the transcript – I’m thinking: Okay, this is amazing – this is practically like an enactment – an acting out – a Freudian slip – and I [think to myself] sometimes clients wonder whether their therapists know what they’re doing – it’s a valid question to be a little bit skeptical when we are consumers of psychotherapy services – does his or her therapist guy knows what he’s doing; and I said I’m thinking it’s a new relationship, but people are a little ambivalent about how they feel about their therapist and I say to her: “Do you perhaps think I am half baked?” She’s got something in the oven – she is baking a cake – it’s denied yet the thought is there – you can’t make this up – you can’t make stuff like this up – so that would be a delta – you get new forms of slips of the tongue, parapraxis, Fehlleistungs. Make no mistake, the transference is always the transfer, and so, this does not come up in Professor Turkle’s work. It might usefully do so, because the genie is out of the bottle.
Arnon: I think the example you gave is wonderful. Being a more CBT like therapist, I would not interpret as Half Baked or those things like but I would say: Wow. What a wonderful opportunity to see you are working – have hobbies – that you can cook – you see, what I am saying is the fact that the therapy is not now in our clinic but in in her room – her place, helps me know things about her self that I would not know – so instead of fighting this – and lets make the room exactly the same – let’s use this uniqueness that I can see their room and maybe they can see my room which is again interesting.
Lou: It is significant, and I would tend to agree, and I claim that I was using it to explore the relationship and it’s true my countertransference was like can – one version of empathy is to be fully present with the other person – and I think Turkle – I mean, she doesn’t actually define it that way, but I think Sherry gets that – she appreciates this matter of copresence and really being with the other. I mean just like, you know, if this dialogue between you and me, Arnon, we go back a bunch of years – you know, if it were successful beyond all of our dreams, notwithstanding internet interruptions, we would succeed in making present a certain empathy. I mean, like I got you, man, I know, you know, we’ve been struggling with these issues for a lot of years, and now that’s a criteria of success: that we bring it forth – and we [are] doing it online. Hey! Hello! We are having [an online conversation] – we couldn’t do this on the ground. I mean you’re in Tel Aviv – we didn’t put this at the start of the video but you’re in Tel Aviv – I’m in Chicago Illinois – it would not be humanly possible otherwise
Arnon: Right – right and that brings me again to my belief that we are reclaiming conversation – we are reclaiming conversation of [as] Internet dialogue and that it works very well – and let me tell you I am doing it for almost twenty years – and I prefer still to have the patient in my clinic – but I clearly suggest to our readers or audience not to go in either direction – not to say that technology will replace the human element and, on the other hand, let’s use technology. May I just add one more thing that we are currently struggling with – remember I want the therapy to continue only by the one-hour session. So the question comes, can we use technology not only by doing the one-hour session but by [for example] I am doing quite a lot of couples therapy – can the couple call me in the middle of a crisis – they are at home –
Lou: That would be powerful – that could be power at the moment, the enemy (so to speak} – the issue is present at the moment
Arnon: That would be one way to enlarge therapy – the second thing I am doing – according to the technique camps, not the relationship – I am using application, but the application is not trying to replace me but trying to resonate our interaction. Suppose you are now my therapist and I was your patient and you will use this resonator application to resonate [saying to me] remembering how we felt when we had this problem – the idea: so we can use technology in many other ways not to fight it and not to say this is everything.
Lou: Technology – surely, I mean this is a cliché, but perhaps hidden in plain view – technology can be a two-edged sword. Like any communication [device], it both connects and divines – I mean, we are relatively inexperienced with online therapy. I said earlier, dropping in the [conversation that the] genie is out of the bottle. In her in her podcast in July 2020 at the height of the pandemic, Sherry expressed concern that there would be a lot of friction, as she said, to going back to in person meeting just as there apparently is a lot of the people going back to the office and to their cubicles in person, and in some cases it’s essential and in some cases it’s definitely not required, and so how to tell the difference becomes the challenge. And it does seem like there is something – she makes the case, I mean, with which I must occasionally and in many ways align, that she makes the case that physical presence has something that is missing, and, yet. The genie is out of the bottle. We’re not going, you know, we’re not going to get rid of our telephones, and if I want to send a message, I write you a letter, or, you know, I send you a message with a boy – a runner – run and deliver – people would do that – we’re not going to be able to go back, so the challenge then becomes how to be authentic online and interact with a phenomenology of online presence with new forms of, I mean, in the world of online humor I’ve been known to say occasionally two new clients, I mean, well what about the digital divide. You need a computer and zoom and a door that you can close for confidentiality, and privacy. I’ve had clients, sadly at the beginning of the pandemic that fell through the digital divide. This young man was living in the same bedroom with his younger brother. He was trying to do the conversation, walking around outside. It was really hard. It was really kind of not working the way it should. And so there are peopling now where are you may need to meet with them in person, because they don’t have the technology. And here in the States, it’s a much bigger country (bold statement of the obvious) than Israel; in some ways, more poverty. There are parts of this country, which are not digitally wired and connected; and so those issues become a matter of social justice as well. And so I have to call them Sherry doesn’t solve them either, but nevertheless she lines up and makes the case that it’s very important. So where are we? I want to – maybe since I’ve got The Conch Shell here, I will tie up two loose ends. I interrupted myself as I was talking about her Memoir. After she answers up for a little while at the Committee on Social Thought and she ends up writing a dissertation at MIT on the social psychology of French political psychoanalysis. She meets Jacque Lacan – so all of the controversial figures Professor Bettelheim, Jacque Lacan – the amazing thing – I really want to put this on the video – he [Lacan] treats her nicely – bad [boy, Lacan] – I mean, Why? This is so uncharacteristic. Why? He wants her to write nice things about him. He wants her to produce a enriching and ennobling and even perhaps – you know, given who he is – a flattering report and she doesn’t of course do that but he does come to Boston to visit at Cambridge, and to visit the colleagues, and the thing about Lacan – the only criticism – the only problem with Lacan – there’s only one problem, Jacque Lacan. He goes to dinner. He doesn’t wear a tie. He throws a conniption fit. It’s kind of an interpersonal disaster. Professor – Sherry not yet Professor Turkle has nothing to do with his bad behavior but it resonates in different ways, She goes on to publish that book I was waving around or about to wave around [on camera] in this version Psychoanalytic Politics [on camera] you see the cover [and a silhouette] of protesters of May 1968 and the Eiffel Tower there. She is not a Lacanist, but she is informed by the dynamics, and, you know, the prohibition creates the desire. I didn’t know I wanted to go online to do therapy until you told me I couldn’t. Now if I have to explain the joke, it’s not funny. That’s the best I can do. So that wraps up her memoire. There’s a lot more there, but those are some of the essential talking points. So I pause for breath.
Arnon: It’s a nice way to finish with the more personal. May I bring up another personal [matter] – Sherry speaks so honestly about a Jewish home she grew up and her problematic father and she came to the same direction that I came to though I have a wonderful father, because he thought technology can help change the statues of the Jewish people. It can help solve the pandemia, the pandemic. It can help the human race. So my father really believed in technology, but not only in the technical aspects, but it’s a part of the human spirit that we can fix things. We can overcome problems,
Lou: That is remarkable, because here you are growing up in a Kibbutz, which is kind of a collective environment. The parents are not dismissed, but moved to the side and here Sherry who gets a lot of attention, in some ways it’s almost impossible to get too much attention but she does and not always of the right kind in some instances, and the end result is this complicated relationship with technology for the things that it is powerful in doing and for its disadvantages and drawbacks as well advantage. So final thoughts as we are coming up on the back end of our conversation. And your personal anecdote is a final thought. Two thumbs up on the work she’s doing. We find that we take exception to the throwing online therapy and online psychoanalysis under the bus as we say here in the States. The problem with that – here is my final reflection – the problem with that is that it is getting crossed under the bus. There are a lot of people under the bus struggling so we want to make productive useful application of all of the means to combat human suffering. What all of these different modalities have in common – whether it’s CBT or biofeedback or group therapy or traditional dynamic therapy or rigorous Freudian therapy or self psychology – they’re not exactly the same – all of these are commitment and a stand against human suffering which is significant and ongoing that’s my thought. So I think Sherry stands with that. I think we have common ground there.
Arnon: Yeah, maybe she would join us in the next go around
Lou: Well, would you like to make an invitation? Make the formal invitation, because that occurred at the start of the conversation.
Arnon: Well, you probably would say it in a more American, polite way – but I would say: Sherry, I was trying to communicate with you, she know it, so I wrote to her, because we wrote a book – we did not mention it yet – we wrote a book about online therapy with Haim Weinberg [editor] and you wrote a chapter – and I wanted to have her in the book – it was before she wrote the Empathy Diaries – and she wrote to me, I am so much into it [writing the memoire] that I cannot stop – and I pushed again – and being Israeli, I pushed, and she replied, “I appreciate it but no.” Maybe now she will be more open.
Lou: There’s an invitation for further conversation. Thinking of the end: we acknowledge your empathy, Professor Turkle – Sherry. I acknowledge your empathy, Arnon, my colleague and friend. I acknowledge the empathy of the listeners to this conversation, because you’re listening creates the empathy in this conversation. We honor and thank and acknowledge you for that. Thank you very much. Signing off.
(c) Lou Agosta, PhD, and the Chicago Empathy Project
Categories: empathic responsiveness, empathic understanding, Empathy, empathy and well-being (health), empathy is trainable, empathy online, empathy training, empathy trends, online therapy
Empathy Lessons 