Caring for Cryptids: Welcoming the More-Than-Human into Psychoanalytic Treatment

Abstract

ABSTRACT Cautioning that if analysts are to continue working virtually, then psychoanalytic theory and technique must be reconsidered, this paper describes the analyst’s profound experience of transitioning from working in-person to working virtually during the COVID-19 pandemic with Lila, a mixed race, trans adolescent. Although the analyst experienced Lila as difficult-to-reach when working in person, the shift to working virtually enlivened the treatment and allowed Lila to explore her early trauma, as well as aspects of her mixed-race identity, for the first time. Drawing on the analyst’s dream of a techno-baby alongside the work of Ferenczi, as well as more recent writings on technology and embodiment, the analyst argues that psychoanalytic conceptions of subjectivity must be expanded to include the more-than-human environment.