Pskype-ology

When you’re blue, you don’t want to get stuck in traffic on your way to the therapist — so go online. By Leigh-Anne Hunter

IT was 9am on a Monday in New York and I had a date with Grace Kelly. Cybershrink. I’d hoped to glimpse the woman I’d seen pictured swirling martinis in Milan, but instead of turning on the webcam, the goddess gazes at me, glittering in Cartier, from a photograph on my laptop screen in my Joburg cubicle.

On Skype, she mutters something about the poor bandwidth in her hotel suite. I start to wonder if she’s really in her pyjamas.

A former London school teacher who reinvented herself — she hired a coach — now Kelly jets around the world in caviar class to help other career women to do the same. “I work as well on Skype. The divine supports us in cyber and real time.”

But Kelly comes with a R62 000 price tag — the cost of the CityGirl Confidence package of 12 half-hour, skip-the-foreplay “laser coaching” sessions.

Scripted phrases fly. “I’ll get you crystal clear on your career goals . . . Hello? Hello?” We get cut off for several minutes and I think: that’s this month’s rent.

Can she sign me up? I need to think about it. “What’s there to think about? Is this something you wanna do or not?”

She’s like a bloodhound going for the jugular. Then she goes all Labrador puppy. “Alrighty! Beautiful. So how would you like to end this call?” As soon as possible.

Closer to home, Cape Town counsellor Lindsey Gittins tells me

’E-therapy allows for anonymity. I don’t know what a lot of my clients look like’

that in peak periods, half her online clients are international. “I’ve had people from Fiji to Canada. They google me.”

These days you don’t have to let trifling matters like geography get in the way when you shop for a therapist. “It’s a matter of finding someone you click with.”

But many of her clients who live in her city still choose this option. Agoraphobics. Housebound moms. And those who don’t want to risk bumping into someone in her office.

“E-therapy allows for anonymity. People have issues. Sometimes strange issues. I don’t know what a lot of my clients look like. It’s like online dating. You can say things you’re not brave enough to say faceto-face. Sometimes in one session it’s all out there.”

She sticks to typing on Skype. “I tell clients they need to write, ‘I’m crying now’, if they are.” Or pick an emoticon. “You have to work hard- er to make sure there aren’t misunderstandings.” Younger clients are especially tricky. It’s all just 2M2H. (Too much to handle).

“If someone wants a hug, I give them a virtual one.” For one client battling to overcome a loss, she held a cyberfuneral. “It was very therapeutic.”

Cape Town psychologist Samuel Waumsley launched therapyroom.co.za last year as an extension of his “traditional therapy” practice. It was a chance to go national. “It’s difficult for psychologists in SA to find work. Social workers have more jobs than we do.”

You can trawl a list of therapists on the site. I’m blonde, enjoy surfing and Freudian ecosystemic psychoanalysis . . . “We’re taking therapy from dusty rooms to the iPads of the new era.”

Overseas it’s serious business, Waumsley says, but then: “In the States everyone is psychologised. They know all about therapy and

’I tell clients I’ll keep my computer secure and they must do the same’

the couch and Woody Allen.”

Demand here has been low. “There’s this idea that therapists won’t take it seriously. Therapists themselves are wary. They’re stuck in their ways. But we’d be crazy to ignore how things are changing.”

Peers in his practice charge “slightly less” than they do for inperson sessions. (Medical aids here don’t cover it yet, he says.) “I think that speaks to the fact that it’s the same thing: a conversation, and we’re listening as hard.”

Even with the option of webcam, their clients prefer not to be seen. One woman says: “I like to imagine I’m baring my soul to Robert Redford.”

Waumsley says: “Some therapists just type, but you can’t call that therapy.” Yes, talking on Skype isn’t quite the same as face-to-face, but: “It’s better than someone never reaching out at all. It makes it easier for a depressed person to take that first step.”

You wonder when they’ll introduce automated counselling. Press one if you’re bipolar, two for fetishism . . . “Don’t even joke. They’re already talking about that.” He won’t counsel anyone online if they’re overseas, unless they’re South African expats. “In the US, you need a PhD to be a psychologist.” It would be cheating. “E-therapy is still a new thing here. There isn’t much regulation yet, so we have all these kinds of worries.”

So which country’s laws should apply if you’re doing cross-country therapy? No one’s, reckons Gittins. “It’s in cyberspace.” Whatever the answer: “I don’t think Interpol is going to come get me.”

Some rules will need to be created. “I tell clients I’ll keep my computer secure and they must do the same,” she says.

Skype stores history.