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“The medium is the message is a phrase coined by Marshall McLuhan meaning that the form of a medium embeds itself in the message, creating a symbiotic relationship by which the medium influences how the message is perceived. The phrase was introduced in his most widely known book, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, published in 1964. McLuhan proposes that media itself, not the content it carries, should be the focus of study. He said that a medium affects the society in which it plays a role not only by the content delivered over the medium, but also by the characteristics of the medium itself” (Wikipedia 2009).
In One Hundred Years of Psychoanalysis, a Timeline: 1900-2000 by Elisabeth Young-Bruehl and Christine Dunbar and designed by Isabelle Roussel we are presented an attractive, colorful, two-meter-long folded document with print on both sides of ten panels—a medium quite different from the materials traditionally used in the education of psychoanalysts.
As clinical psychoanalysts we privilege the spoken word, which is to be listened to and responded to with words—a live conversation, regardless how unequal the contributions to the conversation may be. One participant in the dyad speaks more, and the other tries to listen as carefully as he or she can. This very private interpersonal interaction occurs in the privacy of a space from which others are excluded. When the two participants are at a distance from one another, the communication may occur over the telephone or, more recently, on the computer (via Skype or a web-cam).