Psychoanalysis and the Internet: Postscript

摘要

The ubiquitous presence of the Internet is changing every aspect of our lives. Although psychoanalytic writers have begun to address its impact on patients' lives and analysts' practices, they have not yet explored its more profound effects on how members of the profession have conceptualized mind and behavior. In this brief commentary, I look at the Internet from the perspective of historical change as analysts' analogical experiences have become increasingly digitalized, previously through speech and writing. I describe the effects of this most recent (postscript) revolution on conceptual distinctions such as reality and fantasy, normalcy and pathology, and on core concepts such as a unitary sense of self and repression. Effects of the new zeitgeist already manifest in the profession are described: for example, emphases on multiple theoretical perspectives, on multiple selves and constructed identities, on disavowal and dissociation, and on the interpersonal and interactive relationship in treatment. I concluded that members of the profession need to question whether their basic assumptions about mind, brain, and behavior, forged in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, still meet the challenges of the twenty-first century's Internet age.View full textDownload full textRelated var addthis_config = { ui_cobrand: "Taylor & Francis Online", services_compact: "citeulike,netvibes,twitter,technorati,delicious,linkedin,facebook,stumbleupon,digg,google,more", pubid: "ra-4dff56cd6bb1830b" }; Add to shortlist Link Permalink http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/07351690.2012.703592