Jonathan Day reviews 'UberTherapy' by Elizabeth Cotton.
13 July 2026
Iintend this review to read like one of those letters that you find lost within the drawer of old furniture, that will likely end up at an auction, or house clearance. Upon buying the furniture, you discover this review like unearthing a time capsule. UberTherapy is a book on the sociology of therapy conceptualised within industrial relations. The book offers an insight into a zeitgeist we'll be reminded of when our grandchildren ask us about RealTherapy™ – 'so you used to meet a human therapist in-person, that's wild!' Followed by 'and you used to holiday where!?' [a location that is now unhabitable due to the consequences of the climate emergency].
I hadn't initially intended to start this review with doom, but then again, my copy was addressed directly to me by Elizabeth with the words 'it won't make you rich or happy'. My initial associations questioned whether Elizabeth meant the book, or my personal motivations to inhabit therapyland as both a patient and as a qualified psy-professional; had some kind of teletherapy taken place? A more relevant question might be, knowing that I would be neither rich or happy, why did I proceed to read the book? For me, I think the issues raised by UberTherapy cannot be denied or turned away from. Even if you, dear reader, do not currently work for or subscribe to a digital or uber-ized solution for your existential difficulties in living, you or a loved one may do tomorrow. So, I read on.
The prologue is a personal positioning, and makes clear that the book's project is not aiming to name, shame or indict those working in or making use of digitised intimacy. The prologue is emotive in how the personal and the political are intentionally linked, even though we might hope our consulting rooms can ward off the outside, something which psychotherapy has grappled with since its inception. Elizabeth certainly argues that projects like UberTherapy and Surviving work can instigate collaboration and solidarity rather than alienation and withdrawal from social life. This reminded me of the hope of co-operative initiatives and anarcho-syndicalism. However it remains unclear whether grassroots solidarity and organising like artisans can survive the forces and vast resources of capital. We are already witnessing the coercion of labour around a mass e-commerce model, hosted by platforms operated by ambitious technofeudalists (Varoufakis, 2023) marketing self-care rather than mutual aid.
I found the chapter titled Angerland to be a useful introduction to the forces and systems at work. Many patients and practitioners will be aware of these forces, but may not frame their experience within industrial and employment relations. Arguably this is the product of a workforce subject to sedition and alienation. Elizabeth effectively provides an overview which even those living off the grid can understand. What follows is the growth of the 'homo consumens' (Fromm, 1976:153) and Elizabeth holds a mirror up to us, and, how we manically try to escape from the facts of life through the phantasy of auto-intimacy (Zeavin, 2021). This poses the question; do we really want experiences mediated by algorithms and swipes? Or can we tolerate the frustrations and inconveniences of human interaction which constitute genuine relatedness?
A personal preference may be Elizabeth's style. Personally, I can appreciate sardonic comedy, and the lightening of the mood by referencing cultural phenomenon such as dating-app inspired interactions with various platforms. Some psychoanalysts say comedy and creative outputs are two resources to sublimate the angst is being alive.
In terms of my constructive critique of the book, Elizabeth is evidently invested in conserving the kind of help that helped her, namely, psychoanalytic/dynamic/ depth-orientated therapies – a set of ideas she revisits throughout the book. At various points she uses psychoanalytic ways of thinking to consider the dynamics enacted by UberTherapy. Yet I interpreted some ambivalence, such as chapter four, 'do you have to be a rich man to be a therapist?'. We know that few people ever make it to an psychoanalyst's consulting room... Whilst I too am sympathetic to depth approaches, I do wonder, what would happen if we just do away with psychotherapy all together? (Smail, 2018; Masson, 2012). Elizabeth goes some way in one of the later chapters RealTherapy™ to outline the potential emancipatory power of collective action, informed by Paolo Friere's approach to pedagogy and community capacity-building over bourgeois foreclosure.
To end, sometimes my book club ends with a pledge of action, so the last month's reading doesn't become an expensive paper weight. So, my pledge is to try and have a conversation about this book in my workplace. I might be referred to an EAP moodsplainer to 'manage' my feelings. Worse still, as I write I may be under the watchful gaze of the mental health 'first-aiders'.
SOURCE:
https://www.bps.org.uk/psychologist/do-we-really-want-experiences-mediated-algorithms-and-swipes(accessed 21.7.26)
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