Anyone researching/critiquing this areas may wish to respond to a Reuters story today citing Diane Wieland's piece in Perspectives on Psychiatric Care, and repeating her odd misunderstandings. My own reaction (sent to PPC) is below. -eg ------------------- Dear Editor, I am disturbed by your publishing of Diane Wieland's article purporting to advance our understanding of "Internet addiction". Psychiatric nurses may play an important role in assisting those unable to cope with online interactions, whether due to unique aspects of online settings (asynchronicity, relative anonymity, etc.) or not. And observation and scholarship regarding these matters are indeed deserving of attention. Wieland, however, veers far from observation and not close enough to scholarship. She asserts that online relationships are not part of "real life", as if the former are solely imagined and wholly unimportant. She fans worry that online relationships may result in infidelity and divorce, as if any relationship in any medium could be free from temptation, and without mentioning that online relationships often generate fidelity and marriage. She portrays "interpersonal relationships" online as is they could only be "pseudo-intimate", neglecting more than a decade of research regarding love, friendship, and productive interactions online. The division she reifies, between a forboding cyberspace and a sensuous physical reality, is illusory. Weiland is not the only practitioner to ignore and even contradict long-established sociological knowledge. And I am not often a cheerleader for interdisciplinarity. But the search for psychiatric solutions will be more fruitful if it is more careful. Therapies and treatments that promote abstinence risk isolating patients socially, financially, and even therapeutically, at a time when cyberspace is becoming increasingly important for many people's health, wealth, and interpersonal well-being. Regards, Ellis Godard, PhD Assistant Professor Sociology Department Cal State Univ. Northridge