Author: Therese Rosenblatt, PhD

Publisher: Rosetta Books

ISBN: 978-0-7953-5315-4

New York psychologist and psychoanalyst Therese Rosenblatt is readjusting to a fresh normal among thousands of mental health professionals.

This adaptation has compelled most in her profession to employ a broad assortment of telecommunication technologies to communicate with their patients, including texting, telephones, and video.  A therapist’s craft is changing and will continue to transform. Wrapped up in these strategies is a transformation, not only as a therapist but likewise as an individual.

In HOW ARE YOU? Connection in a Virtual Age: A Therapist, a Pandemic, and Stories about Coping with Life, Rosenblatt chronicles her unsettling experiences as she adapts to online psychotherapy during this extraordinary time. Many of the challenges she encounters are surveyed, covering her personal reflections regarding her attitudes and those of her patients. As Rosenblatt notes, “we were all dealing with loss at some level during the pandemic. That sense of loss is extending beyond the crisis. We lost a way of life. We lost a sense of innocence and a uniquely American sense of invulnerability. For an extended period, we lost social and, most times, familial contact.” 

Beginning with a new clinical situation, Rosenblatt points out that the therapy profession is now confronted with the twin issues of an actual medical threat and exclusively remote sessions. It has remodeled her work, starting from her patients’ first words, How are you? Before the pandemic, patients would jump right into their own stories. Now, patients wanted to know how she was at first. She wondered how she should respond. 

Chapter two delves into how the pandemic has exacerbated existing needs, bringing forth new challenges in therapy. Without disclosing her patients, Rosenblatt provides her readers with a front-row seat on how they are dealing with such matters as loss, loneliness, isolation, overcrowding with relatives, spouses, partners, and many challenges, such as substance abuse. 

The third chapter examines refreshed approaches to therapy and Rosenblatt’s own particular evolution. These fresh approaches include billing via email, session lengths, predictability and endings, absence of an office, remote therapy by phone, therapy by video. It also comprises the toll it has taken on the therapist. 

Rosenblatt discusses virtual therapy that functions in chapter four but does not replace in-person sessions. How do we balance the two?  In her work she was forced to improvise, to provide extra support, to offer a pandemic version of human interaction.

As she mentions, “in these conditions of extraordinary advertsity, we all have fewer resources available to shore up our ability to cope with the extra challenges and life in general.”

The fifth chapter examines where we are and where we are going? Although tele psychotherapy is not new, it has been sped up during the Covid-19 outbreak. Essential issues that psychotherapists must now cope with and probed in the book are responsibility, doctors’ self-trust, and client trust. 

People worldwide are struggling with a fundamental transformation to their way of life because of the coronavirus (COVID-19). We cannot miscalculate the acute changes individuals are dealing with regarding their activities, routines, and facets of their everyday life during the pandemic. This has brought on a shift wherein Rosenblatt and others in her profession are now coping with as it affects their practices.

There are many issues that psychotherapists must deal with while preserving the same standard of care and readjusting to the new normal. It has been and will continue to be a substantial challenge to navigate self-care while trying to help others. As Rosenblatt states: “The pandemic has subverted the old structures, the old norms, and thrown open the gates to changes that were already underway, in fashion, as in therapy and so many other fields.” While there is no precedent or theory for how to proceed, therapists need to adapt their current structures if they are to help their patients.