Since 26 October 1995 information about the BJP has been mounted on the Internet as part of the 'World Wide Web'. I have mounted the contents page, the editorial, the instructions to authors, subscribers and advertisers and the credits page. I started with volume 12(1) and have just mounted 12(2) in the same way. The information is mounted at:
http://www.sghms.ac.uk/mhs/psychotherapy/jrnls/bjpsycho/intro.htm (then moved to http://psyctc.sghms.ac.uk/jrnsl/bjpsycho/ in summer 1996, now, i.e. in 2009, it had become misleading and I've deleted it!)
I imagine that some readers will have some very clear sense of what this means and may be perfectly capable of typing that address into a computer and browsing through the information there. Others may have a sense that the Internet is something desperately hyped and rather widely denigrated, might be wondering about pathological manic, projective and dissociative processes and feel that this is a topic of no interest to them. I hope there are a number between these extremes who feel some scepticism but may want to read on.
The Internet came into being when the American military realized that the electromagnetic pulse from an aerial nuclear explosion would devastate most solid state hardware over a large area. They decided the answer was to develop a network of computers obeying a very simple routing system for messages ensuring that messages would find their own way from the sending computer to the target computer as long as some proportion of the plethora of possible interconnections through any number of any other computers between were still intact. The system boils down roughly to an agreement to pass on to someone else any message that is not for you. This idea was grabbed with enthusiasm by academic computing centres in the USA and a number of other countries, and soon national networks of academic computers were connected together with commercial and military networks giving the capacity to send electronic mail messages to people anywhere else on that 'inter-network' (hence 'Internet'). The costs were, at least initially, underwritten by central academic funding institutions, by the military or by computing firms eager to capitalize on the resulting developments in networking expertise. The system had a very anarchic feel to it with no centralized controlling organizations and with much of the software and documentation that made it workable being placed in the 'public domain' (i.e. not copyright). Despite, and because of, this anarchic organization and generosity, the system actually worked extremely well and grew markedly.
Initially the main functions of the Internet were transfer of electronic mail (Fmail) and files but this has changed markedly in the 1990s with the development of a format, combined with the right software, which makes it easy to put text and graphics up for public access on the Internet. In keeping with the general working of the Internet this is
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not about putting information on one computer that then serves everyone else. It is about collaborative networking in which any number of computers pass messages from your program requesting information, say the contents of volume 12(1) of the BJP, then the computer here passes that back through a number of intervening computers, by no means necessarily the same ones as passed the message the other way. All the computers involved are merely obeying their Internet obligations to act on a request if it is for them and to pass it on in roughly the right direction if it is not for them.
The reallv interesting twist in this new development is that a line in one file (a 'hyperlink') can call up another file, rather like automating the process when reading a BJP article of flicking from a note in the text to the footnote, or of turning from a citation to the reference. The thing that makes this revolutionary rather than just convenient is that the new file you call might be mounted on a computer anywhere in the Internet and the viewer might be none the wiser. For example, there are already computers that compile indices of what is on the Internet which have detected the BJP material on the computer at St George's. Someone in Norway might run a search for 'psychotherapy' through such a computer in the USA and see a line saying 'British Journal of Psychotherapy'. When they click on that line their computer would start showing them the information mounted here at St George's and they need not know (though they can easily find out) that this information is not in the USA. This has led this combination of file formats, software and transfer protocols to be called the 'World Wide Web' (WWW or Web for short) as it does form a world-wide web of interlinked files. Lines in files at my site invoke files in Canada, Australia and other places.
'Browsing' or 'surfing' the Web (these new media develop new words and alter old ones) reminds me a little of being in a group analytic group: you all have the scope to see/hear the same things but as one man perhaps says something about problems with his parents, different people follow 'hyperlinks' to their own parents, to the myth of Oedipus, to a holiday they were thinking of taking with their children next year etc. Publishing material on the Web is quite like convening a group: as group convenor you start with some control of where you meet and who is in the group; as Web publisher you start with control over what you put up; as group convenor you have control over your own contributions as the group develops; and as Web publisher you have control over changing or adding to the materials you mount as time passes. However, as the group develops, different invited members present new and different material and, of course, other people follow a variety of associative paths away from, and back to, that material; similarly, although you continue to control new material you mount on your Web site, the links you put to other material will, as the material other people mounted changes, start to point to something different from what you had first seen there when you set up the link.
How can readers of the BJP join this cyberspace group? Some computer and software companies, all universities in the developed countries and an increasing proportion of schools already have computers connected to the Internet. Those who have not can connect via the telephone and a service provider company. The best known company in the UK is Compuserve who can be contacted in Britain on 0800 000200, but a big American newcomer, AOL, currently has an attractive free trial offer (tel. 0800 279 1234). Compuserve has branches in many countries and AOL is expanding so check these out in the telephone directory if you are not in the UK. You
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need a MODEM (MODulator/DEModulator) to convert bits of electronic information to and from tones that can be sent reliably over the telephone. You also need a piece of software, typically Netscape or a relative. You type the cryptic address given above into a box on the screen and the program will fetch you the introductory information about the BJP. Some lines would be highlit. Clicking on these takes you to other things such as the instructions to authors, other links take you to different information I have mounted, such as the newsletter of the Society for Psychotherapy Research (UK). Other highlit lines would take you off to other material about psychotherapy (and other things) which might be physically located anywhere in the world. In keeping with most Web sites I have concentrated most of my pointers to information elsewhere around the world, known as 'bookmarks' since they mark places you have been reading at some time in the past.
As well as the Web, the Internet offers a number of Email lists. These are lists of subscribers who will automatically be sent copies of anything any subscriber sends to the list, rather like the correspondence section of a journal. The American Psychoanalytic Association now hosts one such list originally compiled in person by Robert Galatzer-Levy of the Chicago Institute. It is open to people with a psychoanalysis-related qualification and genuine interest in the subject (subscription requests to Dr Galatzer-Lcvy at owner-bbs@apsa.org). I was intrigued to notice some subtle but definite changes in my feelings about posting thoughts to that list when it changed from being put together manually by him to being run automatically by a program running on the computer at the APA. I then posted something wondering if others had experienced any similar 'transferences' to the list, and wondering if the slew of correspondence about 'reality' and estimating the 'reality' of reported childhood abuse was not a collective response to some sense of loss of a human parent for the list. There were mixed responses but clearly a number of others had similar thoughts and feelings.
It seems that the Internet can raise interesting questions about our perception and construction of 'reality', about transference, projection, communication and control of affect and emotionality. Concerns about pornography and censorship have been topical. In January Compuserve, bowing to pressure from the German government, selectively removed access to certain materials on the Internet from its subscribers. Hence there are things that I can see on the Internet if I use my direct access in the Medical School but cannot now see if I use my access through Compuserve. It should be noted that, although the pressure came from the German government, these are not materials emanating from Germany and that the access has been removed for people making access to the Internet through Compuserve anywhere in the world. It is probably technically difficult for suppliers to censor the Internet in a less sweeping way, but this raises interesting legal questions and fundamentally contradicts the technological and motivational substrate of the Internet: that you pass on anything that is not for you.
Two particular materials have been censored in this development. The first was a collection of Email exchange lists (actually so-called Usenet groups) ostensibly devoted to exploration of a variety of consenting but, in the technical psychotherapeutic sense, 'perverse' sexual practices. Particular outcry followed the realization that support groups aimed at teenagers exploring feelings of homosexuality/bisexuality were included. The second source to be blocked was an American new Right group publishing neo-Nazi propaganda. Reassuringly to me, not that lam comfortable with
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either intervention, the latter blackout seems to have raised much less of an outcry. In many ways these developments underline the way in which the Internet promises
or threatens some of the 'Global village' effects that McLuhan (McLuhan & Fiore 1967) prematurely described in relation to earlier media. Combine these with the origins of the Internet in anticipation of a nuclear holocaust and it can be seen that the Internet touches some of the fundamental human concerns of psychotherapy. Not only are these contents pertinent, but at times the processes of the Internet also seem familiar to psychodynamic psychotherapy as they can seem to reflect more of the system unconscious and its primary process characteristics than most other media I know.
Although the BJP information was up there from the end of October, I have been mounting information relating to psychotherapy on the Web since July 1995. In the three months the BJP information has been mounted there have been just over 180 accesses to it. About 20% of accesses cannot be ascribed to any country, another 30% come from or through the USA (1 think that would include British visitors using Compuserve and AOL); about 20% come from Britain and other countries from which people have read the information include Finland, Australia, the Netherlands, Italy, Norway, Canada, Sweden, Germany and (twice each so far) Malaysia, Ireland, Israel, Greece and Brazil.
Apart from the practical utility of making people aware of the contents of the BJP very cheaply, I believe that there are more profound reasons for psychotherapy to be repri'sented on the Internet and think it will be fruitful for psychotherapy to move steadily into 'cyberspace'. I believe this because, as noted above, there seem to be important links between the symbols, contents and processes of the Internet and those of psychotherapy. I hope others will dip a toe into these waters, visit the RJP material and other things at this site, and let me and the BJP know more about their thoughts and feelings about these experiences so we can explore the possible implications of psychotherapy for the Internet and vice versa.
McLuhan, M. & Fiore, Q. (1967) The Medium is the Message. Harrnondsworth: Penguin Books.
©Chris Evans
Mounted 21.iv.97, last updated 23.iv.97 then 21.x.09!