The Technologies and psychoanalysis

Abstract

This paper discusses whether the technological changes we are experiencing produce only phenomenological changes in clinical presentations or it is possible to consider deeper modifications in psychic structuring. In order to support the latter hypothesis, we succinctly study:
• The screen as a mirror in the structuring process of the body-representation
• The concepts of time and space after hyperconnectivity
• Modifications in the way memory is built
• The effects of the excessive increase of sensory perceptual stimuli
• The alterations of the public and private spaces
• The hyper presence of violence
The mere listing of the above points should enable the possible discussion of a different psychic functioning and, specially, a process of construction of the Ego that can be different from the one Freud described more than a hundred years ago. Finally, the paper includes some clinical vignettes of children and adolescents, where different uses of these technologies are part of their analytic treatments.