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The first thing to say is that this document is already becoming obsolescent. Things change so fast on the internet that anything that is in print, by which I mean hard copy like a book or periodical, will be likely to be at least partly out of date by the time it appears. The thing to do is to subscribe to a service which will tell you about new things and changes to old things as they occur.
You will thereafter (until you unsubscribe) get an email whenever anything of interest to psychoanalysts or psychotherapists turns up on the internet. The accumulating archive of the egroup is a listing of sites, forums, egroups and other relevant information available on the internet, as well as useful information about other things on the net which you may find helpful, for example, search engines which will find things for you, and anything else I think people who practice and/or study psychoanalysis or psychotherapy might appreciate knowing about.
I have written this essay to make the internet accessible to psychoanalysts and psychotherapists. Some are already well versed in it, but they are a small minority. Many know that there is stuff on the internet of potential interest to them, but they are not sure how to find it. Others know a bit about finding it but are anxious or unsure and are therefore prone to give up easily. My aim is to make it easy. I’ll begin with a short exposition of what you will need. In terms of machines (hardware) and programs (software), then I’ll move on to ways of finding things and close with some lists of things I know about which you may want to make use of.
If you already have satisfactory equipment, you can skip this part, though you might have been thinking of upgrading, so you may want to consider my advice.
First, you’ll need a computer, and your first choice is between a Mac and a PC. Most people ? about 95% ?use PCs (personal computer). There are hundreds of manufacturers and packagers. You can find them at a computer superstore. In my opinion, the best is Dell, who only sell direct from the manufacturer (0870 152 4666 in England for catalogue). They are also the best-selling brand and have the best service, so you can’t go wrong with them. There are several other reputable manufacturers which have good reputations, e.g., Dan, IBM, Evesham (the reputation of Compaq is plummeting). The consumer magazine Which? (Nov. 2001) lists the four brands I have mentioned as high on the list of various measures, including whether or not the customer would recommend it to a friend. There is one firm which is listed last for about everything, TIME Computers. Yet they give you the best bargains. I have a TIME PC, so does my partner and my closest colleague. We find the firm tedious to deal with, but they do sort things out in the end, and you certainly get your money’s worth from them. They advertise daily in the press, and some of their offers are truly breathtaking bargains. However, you probably don’t need all the memory and speed of processing information which they offer. Wisest to go for an admired manufacturer which makes reliable machines and gives good service and telephone backup.
There is a glut of computers on the market, so you will get a lot more for your money than you would have a few months ago. If you aren’t going to do anything fancy, you can get by with the following specifications. There are three things to think about. You will need a processor if at least 500 mhz. That and the RAM (random access memory) will determine how many programs you can run at once and how quickly things will happen. Most machines nowadays come with a processor of 1000 mhz or more, so that’s fine. You should also have at least 128 mb of RAM. I’d suggest 256 mb (I have 640 mb). That’s the memory that will run your software, and it is gratifying to have it run smoothly as a result of having ample resources.
The next decision is how much hard disc memory to get. Hard disc space is the electronic equivalent of filing cabinet capacity. I’d recommend at least 40 GB. (I have 60 GB), but many would say settle for 20 GB. Hard disc memory is cheap these days; so is RAM. So why skimp? If you get involved in downloading music, it will eat up 1 mb per minute. If you have 300 songs, that’s about 1 GB. Pictures also eat up memory. A sensible provision would be 1000 Mhz processor, 256 mb of RAM and 20 GB of hard disc memory. A generous provision would be a faster processor (they go up to and beyond 2000 mhz), 512 mb of RAM and 40 or 60 GB of hard disc memory. You specify what you want and they put them into the computer or find a model from their catalogue which meets your requirements Don’t worry about the modem which connects the computer to the phone plug, since that will be the current standard of 56 k and will already be built into the computer without your having to specify it.
You will also need a printer. The inexpensive ones are called inkjet printers and produce good copies. Some are very cheap (around ?00) and reliable, e.g., Epson and Hewlett-Packard, but if you buy cheap you may find you have made a false economy. The ink cartridges are small and expensive ?most are over ?5 a pop and only do a few hundred average pages. If your printing output is modest, that’s okay though still a rip-off. You can buy compatible ink cartridges much cheaper ?about half ?from office equipment suppliers, e.g., Viking Direct (0800 424444/5 in the UK). But if you are going to print a lot, I’d recommend a laser printer. Hewlett-Packard make good ones costing between about ?00 and ?50. The cartridges cost three or four times as much as those for a cheap ink jet printer, but the last for thousands of pages and are also faster than most ink jet printers at printing things out. They only do black and white though (colour laser printers cost s lot ?more than ?50). An ideal combination would be a fairly cheap inkjet if you want to print colour, e.g., photos, and a laser printer for inexpensive reproduction of articles, multiple copies and print-outs of longer things you download off the net. Here’s a stark fact: as a general rule running costs make up 50% of the lifetime cost of a laser printer but 90% with an inkjet (PC Magazine, Mar. 2002).
I’d also recommend buying a scanner so you can scan documents, pictures, etc. into your computer. I’d recommend a Microtek 4800, which I recently got for my daughter. You can find reviews of new equipment in computer magazines which you can browse at a newsagent. The Microtec got good reviews and is inexpensive at about ?11.
Most machines come with speakers these days, but they aren’t much cop. If you want to use your computer to listen to music I’d buy some better external ones. Better still, you can put an audio lead from your computer into your hi-fi. I should mention here that you can download any music you fancy into your computer with software from Gnutella (Mactella for Macs). Free software, free downloads of music. Many computers come with a CD burner (which you can also buy separately, e.g., Iomega Zip CD 650), so you can make your own CDs with favourite tunes, symphonies or other music downloaded from the internet or selected from your own CDs. Or you can download them into an MP3 player or other portable device and listen to it as one would a walkman or discman. They hold lots of music. I have one that holds 1000 songs or about 70 CD’s worth. Ones with an even greater capacity are available.
I said above that you have an important choice to make between Mac and PC and then went on to write about PCs, since that’s what most people have. However, I am a firm devotee of Apple Mac computers. I have both kinds, and the Apple Mac is far more user-friendly. In fact, they invented user friendliness, and the Microsoft operating system used in most PCs is a rip-off of the Mac system and nothing like as elegant. I’d say that discriminating people prefer Macs. They look better and are more simple to operate. You pay more, but you get more for your money. You will have seen adverts for colourful iMacs. The more fancy Macs are called G4. I have one, and it is wonderful. They have recently come out with an even more elegant model with all the hardware in a dome and with a flat screen as standard. Have a look at some Macs and some PCs. Try them out. Apple Macs came near the top in every measure in the recent Which? survey of consumer satisfaction and were top for ease of setting up, second for whether or not people would recommend one to a friend and third for reliability (after Compaq and IBM and just above Dell). Mac is at the moment streets ahead of PCs in handling pictures, videos and music. They have built-in software called iTunes. You can put your CDs or favourite tracks into the library of iTunes, along with music downloaded from the internet. You can then play the music through your speakers or hi-fi or download it in seconds into a amazing thing called an iPod (?49) which, as I said above, holds 1000 song. I love it. Ninety-five per cent of personal computers are PCs, but the five per cent which are Macs are used by the better sorts of people, or so I think, but this claim is hotly-disputed, and one must admit that there is more software available for PCs.
I should also mention laptops. They have the considerable advantage of taking up a lot less space at home, being easy to put away and being available to take away on trips, to libraries for research or in moving back and forth between home and office. You pay more for your computer, but the convenience is worth it, and a laptop performs just as well as a bigger computer. It is likely to come with only 128 mb of RAM, and the hard disc is likely to be 20 GB tops, but you can increase these easily at the time of purchase or later. Once again, I think Apple’s iBook is the most elegant and best, but there are all sorts of good PC laptops, e.g., Dell, Sony, Toshiba. The screen will be smaller than you get with a full-size computer, but it is adequate.
By the way, there are people who make their livings advising people about what computer to buy and who will get the equipment for you, install it, give you one or more tutorials and be available for telephone back-up and (at an hourly cost of, say, ?0/hr.) will also come to sort out any difficulties which can’t be talked through on the phone. I have had a very good experience with a nationwide group of independent Mac advisers called Macs2you (0870 1694616 in the UK). I have heard of people who do this for PCs but don’t know anyone to recommend (try the Yellow Pages).
Your computer will come with an internal 56 k modem and a lead to connect the computer to the telephone socket. The link between your modem and the internet is an internet service provider (ISP). The ISP is a company, and you will have to choose one and subscribe to its service to use the internet’s main facilities, i.e., e-mail and the world wide web, where all the information is available. Your computer will come with some programs which will offer you various ISPs. If you are going to be connected to the internet (‘on-line? a lot, you ought to get a separate telephone line or at least a gizmo to connect to your phone lead (available at computer shops) to tell you when someone is ringing you while you are on-line. I have a separate line with a cable company, and I use their very fast internet service, Blueyonder. It is always connected and costs ?5 a month, but, then, I am a heavy user. You can get all sorts of deals with different ISPs. BT has a service which allows unlimited usage, as do Freeserve and AOL (AOL’s costs ?4.95 per month for unlimited usage). You probably get CDs for many of these, especially AOL, through your letter box pretty frequently. I use AOL for my PC and Blueyonder for my Mac. If you are not going to be on-line enough to justify the unlimited usage option, go for an ordinary service provider where you pay little or nothing for the service and normal phone rates for the time you are on-line, e.g., Freeserve.
To get email you will need a program. Each of the internet browsers offers one free, as do Yahoo and various other service companies on the web. There are two main browsers, Netscape and Microsoft’s Internet Explorer. I use Netscape, because I have a bias against Microsoft (but, inconsistently use Microsoft’s word processing program, Microsoft Word, because it’s best an most used). You can probably get either of the browsers from the stuff which comes with your computer, but you can also get the latest version from the free CD which comes with practically any computer magazine. I subscribe to PC Magazine and to MacFormat, each of which has a CD every month with all sorts of free software. It’s probably a good idea to subscribe to one or more computer magazines, since things are changing all the time, and you will want to know some of what’s happening. There is a magazine specifically for internet users called .Net (‘dot Net?, which I find very helpful.
PSYCHOANALYSIS AND PSYCHOTHERAPY ON THE INTERNET
I said in the first paragraph that you can subscribe to an egroup which will keep you updated on information on the internet which is available re: psychoanalysis, psychotherapy and related matters. I’ll now explain what an egroup is, but first I’ll say what an internet forum is, since you will probably want to belong to some forums and some egroups. They do much the same things but via different routes. A forum is based on email. It uses some software to send messages sent to it, to people who have subscribed to that discussion group. For example, I subscribe to a forum called psychoanalytic-studies. It is based at the University of Sheffield where I teach. You can join this forum by sending an email to listproc@sheffield.ac.uk
Body of message: subscribe psychoanalytic-studies yourname
Once you have done that, whenever anyone sends a message to the forum, you will get a copy as an email message. You can choose to bin it unopened (if you don’t fancy the topic listed in the Subject line), open it and read it, bin it then, file it or respond to it. It may be part of an ongoing discussion (called a ‘thread? on a given topic or an announcement or whatever the sender wants to say to the subscribers. For the most part people like to read the messages and respond only occasionally. Some respond frequently, some (called ‘lurkers? almost never. There are many email forums. Most are based at universities. Until recently you could only set up one of these if you had access to a server which would act as host, and this was not always easy for people not connected to universities or professional organizations with servers. However, recently a number of commercial organizations have set up discussion groups serving the same purpose but based on the world wide web. These are called egroups. The messages still come to you via email, but there are additional facilities. All have archives of messages, all have vaults or other storage spaces where articles or other longer documents can be stored. When I last looked there were about 90,000 email forums and about a quarter of a million egroups. Anyone can set one up on any decent topic in about a minute, and anyone can join almost all of them (a few are closed groups, a few vet applicants). The most user-friendly host of egroups is Yahoo groups.