Continuity and Change within the Digital Transformation of Psychotherapy

Abstract

The text follows a dispositive analytical perspective to reconstruct the consequences of the digital transformation for psychotherapeutic care in Germany. The central thesis is that this leads to a non-simultaneous simultaneity of continuity and change in the context of psychotherapeutic care, which fundamentally shifts the dispositive of psychotherapy. While the use of technical media can be traced back to the 1950s, the predominant interplay of cognitive behavioural therapy, digital media, and surveillance capitalism leads to the spread of automated therapy practices that affect the role of the psychotherapist as well as the social significance of professionalised psychotherapy. This leads to a discontinuous continuity of the dispositive of the psychotherapeutic. The argument is illustrated by the entanglement of the digital transformation with the questions of a scientific foundation, deprofessionalisation, democratisation, and datafication of psychotherapeutic care. In this regard, the paper opens up perspectives of a historical-sociological consideration of dispositives with regard to processes of socio-technical change.