Telephone Associated Pathology: Clinical Case Studies and Discussion

The advancement of modern technology shapes a nd deve lops new expres-sio ns of psychopathology and accompanying treatments. This is most apparent with the telephone, an instrument ofcontact and communicati on fo r th e pat ie n t, and assessment and intervention for the therapist. T he telephone both con-st rains and creates unique constellations of patient sym pto matology. T his paper will examine one suc h te lephone symptom complex-the habitual over use of the telephone by non-bipolar patients. T he frequent monopolization of th e phone seen in some b ipolar patients will not be considered, th ough the e lements of in t rusion a nd aggression d iscussed in this paper are probably shared by manic patients. A review of the psychiatric literature reveal s a sur pr ising pau cit y of wr iting about the psychodynamic significance of patient 's use of th e telephone, even in the area of sexual paraphilias and sexually obscene phone ca lls. Freud describes th e telephone as a representation of the body, and as a metaphor for psych oa na l-ysis (1,2). Stekel (3) discusses the telephone as a se xua l sym bol, a nd Har r is (4