From Room to Zoom and Beyond: Navigating Screen Relations-Based Psychoanalytic Care and Emerging Clinical Contexts
with Todd Essig, PhD
An Online Workshop for WAWI Graduates, Faculty and Candidates
presented by the WAWI Curriculum Committee
SATURDAY, JANUARY 10th, 2026
10:00am-1:00pm/Eastern
3 CE credits are available for attending this workshop
ABOUT THIS WORKSHOP
The recent IPA Code revisions affirm what many discovered through pandemic necessity: deep analytic work can happen on screens and speakers. But “can happen” is not the same as “happens in the same way.” Many now see that screen relations are similar enough to in-person work to sustain analysis, yet different enough to require us to rethink aspects of our clinical stance and theoretical framework.
This workshop will explore those similarities and differences, both psychologically and clinically: How do screen relations affect presence, attention, and the analytic frame? What happens to transference, countertransference, and reverie when we meet on screen? And, most centrally, how do we make the most of what’s unique about this context rather than in attending differences?
Throughout, we’ll strive to think together. Your questions, concerns, and clinical experiences are essential to this exploration. As broader context for our discussion, we’ll also consider how the rapid emergence of AI relationships is already reshaping the technological landscape in which screen-based care now takes place.
ABOUT THE PRESENTER
Todd Essig, PhD, is a psychologist and psychoanalyst known for pioneering in the creative uses of mental health technologies. In addition to his full time NYC-based clinical practice, he publishes, lectures, and consults internationally on forming best practices in the use of technology to serve human purposes. His primary academic affiliations are Faculty and Training and Supervising Psychoanalyst at the William Alanson White Institute in New York City and Adjunct Clinical Professor at the NYU Postdoctoral Program in Psychoanalysis.
Dr. Essig is a member of the International Psychoanalytical Association (IPA) where he served on the Task Force on Distance Training and on the Task Force on Training in Contemporary Times where he co-authored task force reports. As a member of the American Psychoanalytic Association (APsaA), he co-chaired the COVID-19 Response team. Recently, in the current center of his non-clinical professional life, he founded and is Co-Chair of APsA’s Council on Artificial Intelligence. He teaches and lectures at institutes and societies in the US and in Japan, Canada and England.
LEARNING OBJECTIVE INFORMATION
By completing this class:
1. Attendees will be able to name the process by which online sessions operate similarly to in-person sessions
2. Attendees will be able to list 2 of the 3 ways online sessions afford different experiences than in-person sessions
3. Attendees will be able to name the three interactive contexts operating in the AI Age
References:
Essig, T., & Russell, G. I. (2021). A report from the field: Providing psychoanalytic care during the pandemic. Psychoanalytic Perspectives, 18(2), 157-177.
Lemma, A. (2025). What we don’t talk about enough when we talk about teleanalysis: A response to “The phenomenology of teleanalysis” by Dr N. Zapien. The International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 106(2), 363-374.
Zapien, N. (2025). The phenomenology of teleanalysis: A research study of the experiences of analysts and candidates in training analyses in the US during 2 years of the COVID-19 pandemic. The International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 106(2), 340-36