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In an earlier study, Gordon and colleagues (2015), surveyed 176 therapists, supervisors, and teachers in the China American Psychoanalytic Alliance (CAPA) and found that the psychodynamic constructs hold up well when treating Chinese patients over videoconferencing (VCON). Over-all, expert raters felt that psychodynamic treatment over VCON was only slightly less effective than in-person treatment. However, there were a small number of therapists who had strong feelings against VCON treatment. In this study we asked what differentiated low raters from higher raters of treatment effectiveness. This study focused on the ninety-four therapists, who completed the survey questions on treatment issues. As hypothesised, gender and profession (psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers, and others) were not significantly related to how therapists rated the effectiveness of treatment over VCON. Also as hypothesised, the number of years doing therapy and number of years using VCON were also both not significantly related to how therapists rated the effectiveness of treatment over VCON. As hypothesised, low effectiveness raters and higher raters significantly differed on all the questions regarding specific psychodynamic variables over VCON: symptom reduction, exploring mental life, working with transference, working though relational problems, working with resistances, privacy concerns, and countertransference (p < 0.001 for all these comparisons). Low raters felt that exploring the mental life of the patient was most affected by VCON and working on transference was least affected by VCON.
Nevertheless, low raters and higher raters of effectiveness generally agree that treatment over VCON is valuable since it offers quality treatment to underserved or remote patients, and it is valuable when the patient is house-bound or travel would be impractical. The few who were most critical of treatment over VCON were perhaps comparing it to the more familiar psychoanalytic conditions rather than considering new ways to extend psychodynamic thought and services.