Is anonymisation possible
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 7203310 |
|---|---|
| Authors | John Churcher (British Psychoanalytical Society, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2025 |
| Volume | 106 |
| Issue | 6 |
| Pages | 1151-1159 |
| Publication date | 2025-11-02 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | The International Journal of Psychoanalysis (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0020-7578 • E-ISSN: 1745-8315 |
| Publisher | Taylor & Francis (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/00207578.2025.2585386 |
| PMID | 41627104 |
| OpenAlex | W7127150062 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 15 |
In today's world of rapidly evolving digital technology, guaranteeing the anonymity of a psychoanalytic patient in a published paper is very much harder than it may seem. Anonymisation in publishing is part of a wider problem of psychoanalytic confidentiality. Identifying details can be changed but information relating to external reality may still be present in the text. The risk of deanonymisation often cannot be estimated and is instead subject to radical uncertainty. The paper considers various sources of this radical uncertainty. Anonymisation of a patient may need to remain effective for decades. The conditions for ensuring this are exacting and rarely likely to be met in practice. Possible consequences of abandoning belief in the safety of anonymisation are briefly considered
Anonymity · Psychoanalytic theory · Publishing · Subject (documents · Cryptography and Data Security · Internet Traffic Analysis and Secure E-voting · Privacy-Preserving Technologies in Data
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |