Inside out: being close at a distance. Reflections on the patient’s experience of the psychoanalyst as otherness in a remote setting

The proposal takes its roots from a perspective that considers the setting as a combination of intimacy and limits that, by allowing the onset of transference-countertransference, enables the subsequent transformation inside-outside, shared space-outside world (Bleger, 1967; Winnicott, 1969). The aim of the presentation is to reflect, through a clinical exemplification, on the repercussions on the psychoanalytic process of the remote setting. Specifically, as the online setting is characterised by the illusion of closeness in distance (Pieczonsky, 2022), by a "dissolved" spatial dimension and a lack of corporeity, the presentation will wonder how it can enable the virtual experience that is also real experience to be actualised, reflecting on the psychoanalyst's heteronymy and otherness within a framework in which the risk of an implicit collusion of the absence of boundaries is present.