A master thesis from Aalborg University
A Qualitative Study of the role of technology in video-conferencing psychotherapy: exploring the relation between Clients, Psychotherapists, and Technology
Author(s)
Term
4. term
Education
Publication year
2022
Submitted on
2022-05-31
Pages
59 pages
Abstract
Our always shifting society took a big adoption of online services after the COVID-19 pandemic. Psychotherapy is one of the services that received major attention by people struggling with mental health problems due to the lockdown, pushing psychotherapists to embrace the digital world to provide their services. This project research seeks to reveal the dynamic between clients, psychotherapists, and technology under socio-technical theories, wondering what could be the influence of video-conference technology mediating psychotherapy sessions. Starting from a post-phenomenological stance to explore video-conference psychotherapy, I reflect on Enactivism to give sense to the phenomena of video-conferencing psychotherapy and promote responsible technological design and innovation for tele-psychotherapy. The research relies on qualitative methods including autoethnography and interviews to 8 psychotherapists and 8 clients, grasping the subjectives experience of participants doing video-conference psychotherapy (VCP). Results reveal that technology is already shaping psychotherapeutic methods and practices, changing communication dynamics, bringing new privacy concerns, and allowing new tools to deal with mental health problems. A discussion is developed around the risks and opportunities that emerge from the mediating role of technology in psychotherapy, inviting further research to keep exploring the technological mediation of tele-therapeutic alliance and ethical practices.
Keywords
Documents
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