The Analyst’s Identity and the Digital World: A New Frontier in Psychoanalysis

It is undeniable that the digital world poses problems and ever more cogent questions, not only for the scientific disciplines and the humanities in general, but also for psychoanalysis and the ethical dimension. If we take for granted a long-standing interest in the psychopathological characteristics of internet addiction and an exploration of possible theoretical and therapeutic approaches to it, what is less often assumed is the fact that, via cyberspace, we are entering the virtual world and using it as a possible perspective for thinking about psychoanalysis itself and the mind’s virtual spaces, their possible existence and their possible meaning, the internal role of the setting, the comparison of virtual space with dream-space and with fundamental concepts in the making of psychoanalytic theory, the consequences of all this in the psychoanalytic relationship and the psychoanalytic field, and the possible distinctive characteristics of the analytic encounter in this field.

For at least two decades, our discipline has been taking an interest in the world of information technology from various vertices: individually, at conferences, and even at the level of the IPA1, with opposing and intense emotional and affective responses. This gives us the opportunity to study the world of information technology in depth to see if, among its many aspects and with its distinctive characteristics, it may have some influence on our capacity for symbolisation and on the constructionof identity, and hence of the analytic identity.