Avatar of Desire?: Virtual Space of Possibility in Video and Telephone Analysis*

In this paper the relationship of the analytic pair in treatments with the aid of digital media is investigated as to how it is experienced in a double virtual relationship in which the other is not physically present. The author argues that ‘remote analysis’ promotes a regression to idealised object imagoes because it is located in a double virtual space—that of the medium and that of psychoanalysis. Both spaces involve an attack on or at least a destabilisation of the defence and so target the domain of the virtually immortal wishful impulses (Freud, 1933, p. 73). With reference to a case example, the author discusses how previously suppressed biographical memories that had only been perceived as physical experience and pain could be lived through in double virtuality and experienced so that they became undeniable for the patient and accessible to working through. As a result emotional insight and deeper understanding were achieved. The psychic reality of the unfulfilled longing became palpable and could be overcome in the virtual space of remote analysis and analysis in person.