Editorial

The Internet has been widely accessible to the public for nearly two decades. However, until now the psychoanalytic community has been almost silent about its use, with Gabbard's (2001) early paper a notable exception. Within the psychoanalytic world, the maintenance of a secure frame for the psychotherapeutic encounter has been seen as an absolutely essential cornerstone of practice, allowing transference and countertransference processes to develop and be examined. This may have led those experimenting with the frame by offering therapy or supervision by telephone or voice over Internet protocol to be discreet about their practice, for fear of being seen to flout a fundamental principle of psychoanalysis, and, so, to risk being accused of not practising analytically.

This year has seen the publication of two edited collections of papers on the subject of the Internet and its place in psychoanalytic practice, Scharff's (2013) Psychoanalysis Online, and Lemma and Capparotta's (2014) Psychoanalysis in the Technoculture Era. These very interesting collections, both reviewed in this Special Issue, bring the subject out of the consulting room and into the area of open debate. Scharff reports a recent study by the American Psychoanalytic Association (APsaA, 2011) which found that 28% of respondents reported using the phone and 9% using Skype™ for psychotherapy, and 9% using the phone and 4% using Skype™ for psychoanalysis. Online supervision, online analysis or ‘teletherapy’ by phone may still be practised by a minority of therapists, but they are part of the repertoire of available treatments and current practice. There are issues to consider, for our professional community as a whole and for each individual practitioner, about whether and how to participate in this development.

Scharff's collection, and many of the papers in Lemma and Caparrotta, relates to the provision of private psychoanalytic therapy, supervision and training. Scharff's collection also includes chapt