Ψυχοθεραπεία με ψηφιακή διαμεσολάβηση: Οικειότητα, απόσταση και σύνδεση σε εικονικούς θεραπευτικούς χώρους

This paper is a commentary on the articles in this Technology, AI Bots and Psychology Special Issue. The Special Issue presents a range of conceptual, practice-based and empirical reflections on digitally mediated therapy. This includes looking back to a significant shift in digital engagement due to the COVID-19 pandemic, along with anticipations regarding the landscape of future therapeutic practices mediated by digital technologies. I will discuss key themes resonating across the Special Issue, along with attending to some of the nuance and diversity of the potential and real implications of a greater integration of digital technologies in current and future therapeutic practice.ABSTRAKT Dieses Papier ist ein Kommentar zu den Artikeln in dieser Sonderausgabe zu Technologie, KI-Bots und Psychologie. Das Sonderheft präsentiert eine Reihe konzeptioneller, praxisbezogener und empirischer Überlegungen zu digital vermittelte Therapie. Dazu gehört auch der Rückblick auf einen erheblichen Wandel im digitalen Engagement zur Covid-19-Pandemie, zusammen mit Erwartungen hinsichtlich der Landschaft zukünftiger Therapien Praktiken, die durch digitale Technologien vermittelt werden. Ich werde Schlüsselthemen besprechen, die im gesamten Special eine Rolle spielen Problem, zusammen mit der Berücksichtigung einiger der Nuancen und Vielfalt des Potenzials und der Realität und die Auswirkungen einer stärkeren Integration digitaler Technologien in aktuelle und zukünftige Therapien ausüben.RESUMEN Este artículo es un comentario sobre los artículos de este número especial de Tecnología, Bots de IA y Psicología. El número especial presenta una serie de reflexiones conceptuales, prácticas y empíricas sobre la terapia mediada digitalmente. Esto incluye mirar hacia atrás a un cambio significativo en el compromiso digital debido a la pandemia de Covid-19, junto con anticipaciones sobre el panorama de futuras prácticas terapéuticas mediadas por tecnologías digitales. Discutiré temas clave que resuenan en el número especial, además de atender algunos de los matices y la diversidad de las implicaciones potenciales y reales de una mayor integración de las tecnologías digitales en la práctica terapéutica presente y futuro.ABSTRAIT Cet article est un commentaire sur les articles de ce numéro spécial sur la technologie, les robots IA et la psychologie. Le numéro spécial présente une gamme de réflexions conceptuelles, pratiques et empiriques sur la thérapie à médiation numérique. Cela implique de revenir sur un changement important dans l’engagement numérique dû à la pandémie de Covid-19, ainsi que sur les anticipations concernant le paysage des futures pratiques thérapeutiques médiées par les technologies numériques. J’aborderai les thèmes clés qui résonnent dans ce numéro spécial, tout en m’attardant sur certaines des nuances et de la diversité des implications potentielles et réelles d’une plus grande intégration des technologies numériques dans la pratique thérapeutique actuelle et future.ΠΕΡΊΛΗΨΗ Η παρούσα εργασία αποτελεί σχολιασμό των άρθρων του παρόντος ειδικού τεύχους σχετικά με την Τεχνολογία, την Τεχνητή Νοημοσύνη και την Ψυχολογία. Το ειδικό τεύχος παρουσιάζει ένα φάσμα εννοιολογικών, πρακτικών και εμπειρικών προβληματισμών σχετικά με τη θεραπεία με ψηφιακή διαμεσολάβηση. Αυτό περιλαμβάνει την αναδρομή σε μια σημαντική αλλαγή στην ψηφιακή εμπλοκή λόγω της πανδημίας Covid-19, μαζί με προβλέψεις σχετικά με το τοπίο των μελλοντικών θεραπευτικών πρακτικών που διαμεσολαβούνται από ψηφιακές τεχνολογίες. Θα συζητήσω τα βασικά θέματα που έχουν απήχηση σε όλο το ειδικό τεύχος, παράλληλα με την εστίαση σε ορισμένες από τις αποχρώσεις και την ποικιλομορφία των πιθανών και πραγματικών συνεπειών μιας μεγαλύτερης ενσωμάτωσης των ψηφιακών τεχνολογιών στην τρέχουσα και μελλοντική θεραπευτική πρακτική

The emotional in-formation of digital life: Simondon, individuation and affectivity

The current paper argues for an onto-genetic account of our relationships with digital technologies, that captures the excessive operation of data and the meta-stabilizing role of emotion in the operation of individuation. Drawing on Gilbert Simondon’s (2020a. Individuation in light of notions of form and information. Trans. T. Adkins. London: University of Minnesota Press; 2020b. Individuation in light of notions of form and information: Volume II Supplemental Texts. Trans. T. Adkins. London: University of Minnesota Press.) notions of information and emotion, the paper captures the deep integration of datafication in everyday life, and the operation of emotion to (meta)stabilize the pressure and tension that data generating practices present to psychosocial life. Data can operate across individual and collective life, and therefore present a tension that emotion operates to address in ensuring the persistence of the individual. The paper concludes with an argument for the value of the notion of emotional in-formation for capturing the simultaneity of data and emotion in the ongoing constitution of individuals. This can provide a conceptual foundation for future social scientific analysis focusing on specific data-emotion practices

(Re)thinking body-technology relations with Michel Serres: Emotion, sense and the emergence of algorithmic appropriation

This paper highlights several key principles of the work of Michel Serres and considers them in relation to life in contemporary socio-technical worlds, e.g. notions of relationality, noise, bodies, sense and data. A journey with Serres involves seeking novelty in spaces ‘outside’ of existing knowledge producing practices. This paper highlights how, for Serres, mediation as noise does not operate via a singular universal interface, but is multiple and processual – in essence, everything is mediation. Using contemporary examples of new technologies (e.g. AI and play writing; AI and emotion) the paper considers the value of a Serrian mode of thought for understanding emerging relations between bodies and technologies. It concludes with acknowledging the growing political focus on Serres’ later work, in which he became increasingly concerned to (re)define the contract between humanity and the world. His notion of appropriation through pollution encompasses notions of information and data as forms of algorithmic appropriation, as much if not more, than physical pollution

Simondon, emotion, and individuation: The tensions of psychological life in digital worlds

This article develops new theoretical connections that offer insight regarding the status and operation of emotion in digitally mediated environments. I draw on Gilbert Simondon’s concepts of emotion and affectivity—as key dimensions of his philosophy of individuation—to articulate an account that situates emotion at the heart of psychological life, while accounting for its role in the continuous practices of (re)solving psychic and collective tensions. Simondon offers a model of the psychological subject as operating simultaneously in and through relations with itself as subject and with itself as part of the collective. This informs the analysis in this article seeking to demonstrate that the reductionism and individualising operation of emerging digitised models of emotion render them of limited value to understanding emotional life in digital worlds

Temporalities of peer support: the role of digital platforms in the ‘living presents’ of mental ill-health

This paper considers matters of time in online mental health peer support. Significant evidence of the value of peer support exists, with new digital platforms emerging as part of the digitisation of mental health support. This paper draws from a project exploring the impact of digital platforms on peer support through interviews with users of a major UK-based online peer support platform. Drawing on Gilles Deleuze’s concept of the ‘living present’, the paper highlights how notions of past, present and future operate as co-existing dimensions of the present. The analysis highlights how the immediacy of digital platforms elicits expectations of peer support being ‘on tap’, which creates challenges when support is not received synchronously. Unlike in-person support, digital platforms facilitate the archiving of support, which can (re)enter the present at any moment through asynchronous communication. Anticipations of the future feature as dimensions of the present in terms of feelings regarding when support may no longer be needed. The paper offers potential implications for social scientific understanding of digital peer support, which include valuable insight for mental health services designing and delivering digital peer support

The Electrodynamics of Inhomogeneous Rotating Media and the Abraham and Minkowski Tensors II: Applications

Applications of the covariant theory of drive-forms are considered for a class of perfectly insulating media. The distinction between the notions of "classical photons" in homogeneous bounded and unbounded stationary media and in stationary unbounded magneto-electric media is pointed out in the context of the Abraham, Minkowski and symmetrized Minkowski electromagnetic stress-energy-momentum tensors. Such notions have led to intense debate about the role of these (and other) tensors in describing electromagnetic interactions in moving media. In order to address some of these issues for material subject to the Minkowski constitutive relations, the propagation of harmonic waves through homogeneous and inhomogeneous, isotropic plane-faced slabs at rest is first considered. To motivate the subsequent analysis on accelerating media two classes of electromagnetic modes that solve Maxwell's equations for uniformly rotating homogeneous polarizable media are enumerated. Finally it is shown that, under the influence of an incident monochromatic, circularly polarized, plane electromagnetic wave, the Abraham and symmetrized Minkowski tensors induce different time-averaged torques on a uniformly rotating materially inhomogeneous dielectric cylinder. We suggest that this observation may offer new avenues to explore experimentally the covariant electrodynamics of more general accelerating media.Comment: 29 pages, 4 figures. Accepted for publication in Proc. Roy. Soc.

Extracting predictive models from marked-p free-text documents at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, London

In this paper we explore the combination of text-mining, un-supervised and supervised learning to extract predictive models from a corpus of digitised historical floras. These documents deal with the nomenclature, geographical distribution, ecology and comparative morphology of the species of a region. Here we exploit the fact that portions of text in the floras are marked up as different types of trait and habitat. We infer models from these different texts that can predict different habitat-types based upon the traits of plant species. We also integrate plant taxonomy data in order to assist in the validation of our models. We have shown that by clustering text describing the habitat of different floras we can identify a number of important and distinct habitats that are associated with particular families of species along with statistical significance scores. We have also shown that by using these discovered habitat-types as labels for supervised learning we can predict them based upon a subset of traits, identified using wrapper feature selection

Effect of signal duration on detection for gated and for continuous noise

Effect of signal duration on detection for gated and continuous nois