Perception of Self through Technology

Changes in Relationships and the Perception of Self through Technology

Introduction

 

Emotional disruptions often lead to efforts to relieve psychic pain through engagement in activities that are intended to modify a sense of our self identity. Those challenged by depression, anxiety, and a wide variety of other mental health problems appear particularly likely to seek out such activities, with addictions frequently serving as a common, effective, but ultimately destructive, means of psychological coping. In this context, contemporary technology has come to provide seductive opportunities and potential dangers (including addiction) in the quest for psychic relief and escape from a painful sense of who we are to some modified, more bearable, version of ourselves. This paper examines some of the ways that our use of technology may change our sense of ourselves, and how some of the problems occasioned by the embrace of technology may manifest themselves in clinical treatment.

The literature written for clinicians seeking insight into this topic is negligible. A statistical review of professional therapy journals, using a cross-analysis with pairings of the word technology with counseling, therapy, and psychotherapy reveals that very little has been written on this subject. I found some articles about the future use of technology in working with children and adolescents, but little on adults and nothing on personality changes or modified sense of self related to technology. Others, however, have written very clearly on the relationship of technology to the world of our experience. Goren (2003) writes that “Technological innovations of the cyber age have altered fundamental processes of perception and experience,” and our sense of self (p. 437). And Clark, who has written more incisively than most in this area, notes that technology provides the ability for us not only to re-create our own body images, but to gain knowledge about who and what we are, and “alter, augment and extend our sense of presence and of our own potential for action” (2003, p.115).

It is beyond question that technology even now, and certainly in the future, can provide people in emotional pain with a wide spectrum of opportunities for coping with their problems. Those with relationship issues, for example, may engage in a broad range of social experiences online, which allow them to easily try on different personas, as well as gain knowledge about themselves and the world in which they exist socially. Alternatively, the advent of online and video game playing offers the opportunity to fantasize new versions of an idealized or altered sense of self. There are useful and productive ways to enhance a sense of self that are provided through the use of technology, and there are other ways, including an addictive relationship with technology, that are more likely to have destructive than constructive outcomes.

Our discussion here presumes that both the formation and subsequent modifications of our sense of self are in large part shaped by our interactions with the world around us. As Clark has suggested, the most basic notion of the self is our physical presence in the world, “determined by our direct control-experiences that provide kinds of statistical correlation between motor signals and sensor feedback” (Clark, 2003, p.132).  From the perspective of psychoanalytic theory, or course, the most important part of the world around us in our psychological formation is our experience of the relationship between the self and another person (Stern in Neisser, 1993). Our sense of ourselves is shaped in the context of social interactions with others, who provide information about us (through the lens of their own subjectivity), and assist us in developing the means to regulate, share, and understand our affective experiences (Stern, 1985). The kinds of developmental issues that often drive adult consumers to exploit technology to regulate, define, or re-define their sense of who they are seem frequently to originate in problems associated early in life with our relationships to our human and physical environments.

Technology, of course, is no stranger to the world of the psychological growth of the self. Playing recorded music to stimulate or soothe infant-toddlers predates the lives of most, if not all, of us. More recently, parents who themselves are immersed in a technological world utilize technology in child-rearing quite freely. A Kaiser Family Foundation survey revealed that sixty-one percent of twenty-first century babies one year of younger were spending an average of one hour and twenty minutes daily with screen media (Tapscott, 2009). Mobiles on cribs are being replaced by screens, and it is not unusual for a parent to give a child, even a baby, the parent’s cell phone as a toy. One of the eeriest experiences I have encountered in my clinical professional career was observing a grandmother changing her granddaughter’s diaper while the baby’s mother was attending an outpatient chemical dependency treatment class. The baby, who was two or three months old, was extremely fussy and easily irritated. To divert the baby’s attention and quiet her, the grandmother put her I-pad about six inches from the baby’s head. The baby turned toward it and became totally focused on the activity on the screen. Her eyes were widely dilated and her body became quite still while she watched.

A 2007 study found that as pre-schoolers were exposed to more electronic media, parental reading and teaching activities at home decreased (Tapscott, 2009). A multitude of “apps” claiming to boost imagination and learning skills are available for toddlers as young as two years old (Hallak, 2014). Short videos on YouTube carry forward the Sesame Street television tradition, but on demand, teaching pre-school children the names of letters, how to count to ten, how to identify colors, and how to identify shapes. Somewhat more passively, one study showed that twenty-nine percent of children two years old and younger had a television set in their bedrooms (Tapscott, 2009); for those not so fortunate, the family room set is usually close at hand to keep them quietly occupied.

Neuroscientists theorize that technologies are now shaping, and will continue to shape, brain functions as we expose ourselves increasingly to technological forces in our lives. Clark, for example, called the invention of the cell phone “a mindware upgrade, an electronic prosthesis capable of extending and transforming one’s personal reach, thoughts, and vision” (2003, p.10). He contended that as technology becomes more portable, pervasive, reliable, flexible, and increasingly personalized, our tools will become more and more a part of who and what we are (2003). In his view, technological processes are constantly contributing to a person’s emerging psychological profile, as well as shaping our lives and our sense of self. Rosen (2012) has reported on research on the science of the mind and the growing use of social media, showing that this technology is actually changing the brain. Such changes are possible because of the plasticity of the brain, wherein experience itself promotes a constant process of strengthening and weakening nerve cell connections. Given the rapid pace of technological change in our lives, it is not unreasonable to expect that the relational worlds and intersubjective fields of our consulting rooms will be occupied, and have been for some time, by brains which function and are wired differently from their predecessors.

Katherine (Case Study)

One case of mine in psychoanalytic treatment illustrates well how technology was put to use in the service of promoting a coherent and ongoing sense of self for a middle-aged woman from a chaotic family background. Katherine was a mental health practitioner whose technical competence was widely recognized, but her difficult personality ultimately undermined her ability to have satisfying relationships professionally and personally. Her sense of herself was so fragmented and negatively toned that her every professional and social engagement with the world would inevitably become annoying and be converted into an attempt to gain confirmation of her own value and importance in the lives of those with whom she worked and lived. Her immediate motivation for coming into treatment was an ongoing rupture in her relationship with her daughter, who told her she needed mental health assistance. In what seemed initially to be simply a gesture to pacify her daughter and regain access to her, Katherine began treatment with me (and then agreed to be a control case in my training), and soon thereafter sought to engage me in direct communication with her daughter to validate Katherine’s good intentions (and presumed progress).

Katherine’s early life had been highly chaotic. Her mother appears to have been psychologically unstable, and involved perhaps promiscuously in multiple relationships from early in her life. She had given up her first two children for adoption at birth, but kept her next two from different relationships with her as she moved from state to state in search of a place to settle down. At one point, she settled in the Midwest where she met and married Katherine’s father, but remained there only a short period of time. After Katherine was born, her mother left again, this time with three children in tow. Katherine reported that her father was an ineffectual man, but his sisters (her paternal aunts) persistently tracked her mother’s location through welfare offices as her mother moved west from one place to another. Ultimately, they contacted Katherine’s mother and convinced her to transfer custody of two-year old Katherine to her father. Katherine did not reunite with her mother until she was a young teen bent on reconnecting with her. In the interim, her mother had given birth to a sixth child who she also relinquished for adoption. After the reunion with her mother, Katherine visited her in the summers for short visits, but remained physically with her father and his family.

Nevertheless, she never felt a secure sense of attachment with her father, or welcome in his family, despite being his only child. He disengaged from her upbringing for most of her childhood, leaving his two sisters to raise her. She reported feeling more like a pawn in a custody game than a cherished niece.

She was left with the idea she was a nuisance to them, and remembers their telling her that she was expected to leave home as soon as she graduated from high school. In treatment, Katherine wavered between bitter feelings that her mother had never committed to their relationship, and had never considered fighting for her custody, and a desperate wish to idealize (and identify with) her mother as a persecuted victim of her paternal family’s anger and disdain, someone of whom she might be proud and derive some positive sense of herself from their relationship.

Given the young woman’s difficulties in finding family relationships that could foster a positive sense of self or secure sense of attachment, it is not surprising that once on her own, she sought such relationships with men. After two unrewarding efforts, Katherine found herself alone with a daughter and a son. In a remarkable display of sheer will and intelligence, and in the face of severe financial difficulties, she went back to school and achieved an advanced degree in the mental health field. She was able to pull herself out of debt, and in time began a successful small business as a service provider. In this limited, but impressive way, Katherine literally became a self-made woman.

But psychologically, the task of finding a narrative of her life that would allow her to feel an enduring and positive sense of self remained daunting. In treatment she recited an ongoing litany of relationships in her life that followed the same pattern of hope and disappointment. Typically, she would identify someone with extensive unmet needs and become a provider for them, in exchange for which she sought their obedience to her as a symbol of her importance to them, and ongoing validation of her value to them through their loyalty. As appeared most dramatically with her daughter, but equally in all of her significant relationships, the other party would end up feeling emotionally used by her and reject her completely. I was not immune to this experience. While I was pleased by her agreeing to become a control case in my training, I was less pleased by repeated boundary violations such as pressures to meet on her behalf with other family members, and to accept without comment the signs supporting her business she posted on the property of my office. Katherine came to recognize this pattern after considerable work in the analysis, a project that was probably driven equally by my wish not to be used with such utter disregard. Regrettably, however, it cannot be said that her insight has freed her yet of this futile pattern of turning her good works into ashes through her need for ongoing recognition and obedience to her will from those she sought to assist.

There are several reasons why I have written here in such detail about Katherine’s version of her personal history. First, it provides the background for understanding how tools of technology became vitally important to her efforts to search for and gain a coherent and positive sense of herself, particularly in the wake of her repeated failures to accomplish this goal otherwise through her well-intended, if relentlessly self-serving, engagements with family members, friends and acquaintances. And secondly, it shows why Katherine became obsessed by efforts to unify her childhood experiences into a coherent and validating personal narrative by creating a family history, one that would document the injustices to her, and demonstrate her ability to establish control over both the narrative and the chaos to which she had been constantly exposed in childhood. Making skillful use of her computer aptitude and various online search programs, she was able to chart a genealogy and locate the place precisely where she belonged (and should be attached) in it. This brief description does not begin to convey the enormous depth and scope of the project, which would have been inconceivable without the computer and software programs for creating genealogies. In a project that dwarfed in scale and intensity her aunts’ ingenious search for her during her own infancy, Katherine’s search for herself involved relentlessly tracking down historical documents such as family birth certificates, marriage certificates, death certificates, legal cases and other family lore. She contacted family members through email and saved every message of response from them, often focusing obsessively and defensively on the negativity of the insults she found in most of their replies to her. Her project became the proof she wanted that she was truly a victim.

The narrative she was developing from this research was a vital part of her project to demonstrate her victimization and essential goodness in the family, and I, as her analyst, had an important assignment from her to be a witness and provide the validation and confirmation of her claims to have been regarded and treated unfairly, as recently as by her own daughter. When I reviewed my notes on her treatment recently, I was overwhelmed by the sheer volume of data about the family that she had deposited with me, and demanded that I make sense of and organize coherently. For quite some time, it was impossible to see the forest for the trees; flooded in details and obscure facts, I found it difficult to know why Katherine was conveying all of this information to me, and why it was important to her that I take it all in. I knew only that I was buried in computer charts and genealogy data, forced by her need to be understood as a good family member to master the details of her family’s history. In a sense, the computer was helping her create a strengthened sense of identity as belonging somewhere, to someone; and I, among those close to her, would be called upon to accept her version of events as she documented them. This assignment became particularly difficult not simply for logistical reasons, but because the level of viciousness of the comments directed against her, from her daughter as well as others, left me wondering what kind of person I was dealing with and being asked to validate as an innocent victim.

What I wish to emphasize here, rather than the treatment issues posed by Katherine’s case, is the importance of her use and mastery of the technology available to carry out her project. Her case represents an instance of a constructive, if exhausting, effort to exploit available technologies to develop by herself a positively toned sense of self, in the absence of any other effective relational approaches to reconstructing her identity. Subsequently, her analysis created a means to establish a positively toned relationship with an idealized other, her analyst, so that her experience of being seen and loved, rather than despised as she was by her family and later by her romantic partners, daughter, and friends, could ease the pain she constantly carried in her day-to-day life. It is perhaps not a coincidence that she has since also constructed a Facebook presence with more than 400 “friends,” as equal testimony of searching for a sense of herself as valuable for having positive meaning in the lives of so many others.

Technology as an Instrument of Fantasy and Dissociation

Technology at the cutting edge unquestionably offers ever-multiplying avenues for the management of affective states through fantasy and dissociation. Both fantasy and dissociation may be put to use in the service of escaping from awareness of these states, or alternatively, as a means of managing those states in productive ways that open opportunities for creativity and focused action. Video games, for example, may promote original or unorthodox approaches to problem solving that require the extended use of imagination (fantasy). Equally, the role-playing required in many video games can allow players to assume identities which legitimize giving full play to pathological thoughts and behaviors that may be carried back into daily lives of the players, even after the machine has been turned off. In the same way, the Internet provides broad access (as in Katherine’s case) to highly useful data, as well as to relatively benign or even self-enhancing ways to share human experiences with others. Conversely, we may immerse ourselves in online communities and activities that not only relieve us from the pain of our daily lives, but also actively furnish pathways for detaching ourselves altogether from the realities of our non-cybernetic selves. Indeed, some of these pathways offer prospects for a descent into addiction of one sort or another, and leave us just as troubled and badly off psychologically as more traditional forms of addiction unrelated to technological development.

Lou (Case Study)

A second case illuminates some of the issues associated with the availability of ways to participate in self-altering, technologically generated, cyber-communities. Reverend Lou appeared at my private office four years ago, a Protestant minister in his mid-thirties, seeking treatment for sexual addictions. Married and the father of three children, he was impelled to begin therapy by his wife’s decision to end their marriage, and legally restrain him from having any contact with their children. The work began despite a rigidly-constructed narcissistic line of defense behind which Lou denied having any psychological problems.

Both Lou and his wife were victims of sexual abuse as children. She had been molested at the age of twelve or thirteen; Lou had been engaged in a traumatizing three-year sexual relationship with his older half-sister beginning when we was six or seven years old. Lou’s mother was a chronic alcoholic, physically and emotionally abusive, and, needless to say, far from the kind of mother with whom the children could form secure attachments. Their father, too, was remote and self-absorbed. Apart from the relationship with his older sister, Lou was left largely to his own devices when it came to managing the torment and chaos in the family home. In the safety of his closet, the young boy spent hours reading the classics, and later fantasized that he would bring the characters he read about to life when he grew up. In early adolescence, he became interested in studying for the ministry, and fueled by the recognition he received for this interest, he ultimately became a Protestant minister. Also in early adolescence, he became interested in print pornography, and eventually went onto adult Internet sites. He became fascinated with the variety of options available on these sites and began to explore secretive sexual fantasy sites where stimulation is disconnected from a relationship. Apparatus exists that can interconnect multiple people through Skype. Physiological response can be monitored by electrical devices connected to the computer in these virtual relationships that do not involve any physical contact with another person. Intimate relationships are based only on fantasy. Lou revealed that his behavior became compulsive, and he withdrew socially from his family and other real relationships.

His wife was a minister’s daughter, and they met through their affiliations with the same denomination. Lou was ten years her senior, and they eloped when she turned eighteen, much to the displeasure of her parents. Lou and his wife shared not only a denomination; they were also united by a common interest in sexual fantasies, and in utilizing technology in their exploration of the erotic. One of their fantasies involved participating together in sexual activity while under the watchful eyes of an imaginary young boy, six or seven years old. The fantasies then broadened to include the young boy as participant as well as observer; and soon thereafter, they were joined by an imaginary girl of twelve or thirteen, who was similarly deployed either as observer or participant in their sexualized dramas. Lou and his wife participated in several sexual fantasy sites, ultimately leading to their own personal sexual experiences becoming public via the Internet.

Whatever psychological meanings these fantasies and imaginary evocations of their youth may have carried, they were not sufficient to satisfy Lou’s intense desire for sexual gratification. Eventually, his wife encouraged him to seek other sexual relationships online and in the course of his doing so, he became interested in experimenting with a polyamorous relationship with a woman and initiated a meeting with her. He planned to come back from the rendezvous and communicate the details of the experience with his wife. Lou fully intended to draw his wife into her own experience with this process. Such a relationship depends on mutual trust and the consent of all parties involved, but Lou’s wife found herself unwilling to sanction it. When Lou persisted, her resentment mounted, and ultimately she chose to leave him rather than compromise on her opposition to such arrangements. She was experiencing guilt and remorse for her involvement in the fantasies, and became fearful of the depth of what she was beginning to experience, while Lou was interested in becoming more deeply involved in the uncharted territories of the imagination.

Lou initially perceived the circumstances of his wife’s departure in terms of her conflicts, and not at all his. At one point, he even suggested that she had left him for another man. It took a long time for him to acknowledge that his sexual activities, fantasies, and choices, even at the expense of the integrity of his family, were expressions of his relational issues. As a specialist in the treatment of addictions, I regarded Lou as being in the throes of a powerful sexual addiction, which his wife had reoriented away from her to the Internet, because it was exceeding their capacity to regulate emotionally and psychologically within the confines of their marriage. Perhaps the irresistible (and overwhelming) power of Lou’s insatiable addiction derived from its expressing in eroticized form some fantasized version of the hunger he felt for relationships he had never been able to have growing up, apart from his eroticized relationship model he shared with his sister. Whatever the cause, the power of his erotic attraction towards the woman he found online sufficed to rupture his connection with his family.

From the outset of our work together, Lou believed that our relationship would likewise be inadequate to contain his yearnings for relational gratification. His entire experience as a child, to say nothing of the termination of his marriage, suggested that he would not be able to ever find a relational home. In a powerful expression of paternal transference, he complained that I did not show signs of empathy for him and his situation. He felt I doubted the information he provided, or was overwhelmed by the nature of his experiences. Such anxieties were not without foundation; I had much work to do with my countertransferential feelings about how his lifestyle had shattered his family. We persisted nonetheless, and in time he seemed relieved to discover that I could understand him. I sensed that he saw in me the father he yearned to connect with, someone who could help him make sense of his childhood and contemporary experiences. Together, we were in fact able to identify some of his deepest needs, feelings and thoughts, furnishing an experience for him that was closer than any such bond he had enjoyed in his sexualized world.

Throughout the initial therapy sessions, Lou never expressed guilt for his online addiction, which fit his narcissistic personality style. He may have felt some guilt or remorse, but primarily he focused on his shock that his wife had taken their children and left him, possibly because of his insatiable sexual appetite, the nature of his internet involvement, and the depth of their fantasy exploration. The only regret he came close to having for the experience was that his wife became somewhat uncomfortable being involved in it over time. He remained focused on the fact that she broke her marriage vows. According to him, because he was a minister, and both he and his wife were committed to their faith, he held her accountable for leaving the marriage and separating him from his children. His secret commitment to his sexual fantasies was to remain a secret.  More than guilt or shame, he felt humiliated and was concerned about what his wife may have told the children about him. After a tremendous legal fight and the resistance of his wife’s allowing any supervised visitation with his children, Lou remained vigilant as to their reaction to him, especially with his oldest son. He still believed that his wife should accept responsibility for her side of the participation in the escalation of their sexual fantasies. He was also humiliated about what had circulated in church about his situation and caused some members to separate from the congregation, but again felt his wife was primarily responsible for this. In intense sessions to try to draw out of Lou some recognition of his lack of remorse or guilt for how his involvement affected his family, numerous times he would avoid or reject this. He always reverted to his wife being responsible. He would not accept responsibility for grooming her into this process that had been unknown to her.

Reflecting on the role technology had played in Lou’s marriage, the multifarious nature of Internet activities revealed itself to be highly worthy of close attention. In the beginning, it had furnished inspiration and perhaps a source of ideas for the couple in their experimentation with different sexual fantasies to play out together. This role seemed a harmless enough contribution to their efforts at regulating through fantasy some of the pain each endured as a consequence of difficult childhood experiences. They began with a creative cartoon fantasy site where each of them selected a character and then projected their characters into different scenarios of sexual activity. They created their own short movies. When they moved on, it was to Fantasyland where couples share their fetishes and other unusual sexual interests. The role of the Internet in their relationship took a more toxic turn, however, when it was designated by the two of them as caretaker of his emotional needs (defined narrowly by her as “sexual” needs, but more broadly by him, eventually, as a deep emotional connection). Lou and his wife formed online relationships with other couples and groups on Swinger sites. These relationships could lead to actual social connections for sexual parties. In retrospect, it is easy to imagine that a more satisfactory outcome might have been achieved by turning to couples therapy at the least, to say nothing of intensive therapy for each of them. But before his resort to personal therapy in analysis, Lou grew more dependent on the Internet’s ability to furnish him with objects of sexual desire, posed addictively as answers to his yearnings for relational gratification. The ultimate tragedy here was that in his pain, he chose to sacrifice the relational gratifications available over the long term by his wife and children in favor of the lure of illusory gratifications offered in online sexualized packaging. Essentially, his overpowering emotional needs and fantasies of gratification were uploaded out of the relational limits of the marriage into the infinite but depersonalized expanse of cyberspace. It remained for analysis to help ground him once again in relational matrices where he might develop the capacity to achieve such gratification without the intermediation of sexual fantasy.

Therapy and Technology

Finally, we may ask how technology is affecting our work as psychoanalysts. We might first observe generally that contemporary psychoanalysis requires a higher level of personal involvement and exposure with our patients than classical models and rigidly defined boundaries would permit, much less require. The intimacy achieved in the therapeutic relationship today is regarded as one of the key mutative factors in our work. By the same token, our patients have available to them, in addition to their relationship with us, a host of online relationships and data bases from which to draw information about themselves and, for that matter, about us. While this availability may enhance the level of intimacy in our connections with them, it may equally dilute or impede the development of that intimacy. To ascertain the impact of our technology on our patients’ ties to us, we need to be aware that these issues exist, and must be investigated as part of our illuminating the environment in which our relationship unfolds.

Even the analytic frame provided by the consulting room and the clock is potentially impacted by technology. Whereas extra-consulting room contact was previously limited by and large to phone messages, answering machines, and well-defined office hours, emails and cell phones expose us to calls from our patients, with some expectation of responses prior to the next session. Such technology again brings patient and therapist into closer contact with each other, at times more so than the therapist may welcome. Boundaries between personal and professional hours may blur. By the same token, online technologies such as Skype permit visual contact between therapist and patient, perhaps enhancing the value of their contact beyond that of the old phone session. However, as many of us have already discovered, Skype sessions are not equivalent to face-to-face treatment in our offices, despite their convenience where distances and traffic may easily deter personal attendance at therapy sessions. It is possible that technology may increase the popularity of analysis, if some (or eventually all) of therapy can be accomplished without requiring the patient to come to the analyst’s office.

In the shadows of the net: Breaking free of compulsive online sexual behavior.  Patric Carnes, Ph.D; David Delmonco, Ph.D ; Elizabeth Griffin, MA.  Hazelden  Center City, Minnesota  2007.

CDG (p1) cites  some of the problems created with internet access. “The opportunity is too enticing, alluring, fulfilling, immediate, and powerful.” “So much is available. There is so much opportunity and stimulation available that it’s difficult to control. And hard to stop. For some it is seemingly impossible to stop. CDG (p.1) labels the shadow side to the Net to be of concern. “The shadow world of cybersex is overtaking and overwhelming…” CDG (p.3) proposes that “of the estimated 322 million individuals who actively use the Internet, and estimated 40 million adults admit to regularly visiting pornographic Web sites.” “Many people struggle alone and in silence, too embarrassed of guilt-ridden to seek help, not knowing where they can find help, believing that no one else would really understand anyway.” One of the most fascinating experience I have discovered as a therapist is that many people find themselves in a kind of online trance or time warp, during which hours just slipped by. Another interesting variable is when individuals, develop friends in sexual chat rooms who become more important than their family and friends in their life.  CDG (p.5) states that “It’s almost impossible to imagine it now, but only ten short years ago, most of us knew little, if anything about this mysterious creation of communication called the Internet.” “Today, however, its burgeoning growth and wide accessibility are altering patterns of social communication, business activities and interpersonal relationships.” Cdg (p.5) further states that “the Internet has profoundly changed many aspects of our lives.” CDG (p.5-6) states that “authors like Lynn White in a classic book on Middle Ages, Medieval Technology and Social Change, and Alvin Toffler in Future Shock, have argued that new technological developments can actually created change in human thinking patterns and in how we see the world-changes that re known as paradigm shifts.” CDG (p.7) notes that “some social scientists have noted the educational potential of the Internet, citing the greater availability of information about sexuality and the potential for more candid discussions of sexuality online.” “The Internet can also offer the opportunity for forming online or virtual “communities” in which isolated or disenfranchised people can communicate with one another about sexual topics.” CDG (p.13( references a developed medial model for measuring the attraction of people to the Internet to engage in sexual activities, called the Cyber Hex for understanding the reasons why the Internet is so attractive and powerful for individuals.”  “The cyber Hex contains six components (a hexagon) that combines to create a “hex-like or trance state for online users (CDG p13). The sides of the hexagon include: integral, imposing, isolating, interactive, inexpensive, and intoxicating.

According to CDG (p.14) , the Internet has become an integral part of most people’s personal and work lives. Internet has become a way of life. Avoidance of the Internet is difficult, if not impossible  CDG (p.15) states that the Internet is becoming more and more often a necessity. “It is being integrated inot our lives, its use is, in a sense, being externally imposed on us by society.” The imposing factor suggests “a loss of contrl in that we have fewer options to decline using the Net.” Likewise “The very breadth of the Internet’s content is, in and of itself, formidable and imposing.” With Isolation, CDG (p.16) refers to “the most powerful component of cybersex. Intoxication occurs quickly and privately. The opportunity is available for separating oneself from others and to engage in whatever fantasy you prefer, well beyond the distraction of reality.” “The internet system is interactive system, with a pseudo-intimacy with others. The Internet equipment provides a low-cost alternative to part methods of material. Intoxification from the process and available content can produce and euphoric response.” There is an abundance of choice for communication and materials.” This also presents the possibility for instant gratification.” “The variety of choices in retrieving and connecting provide an enormously alluring and creates an intoxicating trance.” CDG (p.18) states “the opportunity of people to “develop sexual fantasies and objectify others without the fear of rejection.” Also, the user is free to become part of the fantasy without responsibilities or consequences.”

CDG (p.39) emphasizes that “part of the power of cybersex is that It’s one step removed from reality.” “Having thoughts and urges and fantasies and then acting on them via the Internet seems different from acting on them in real time.” “We are not face-to-face, literally, with another human being.” “We can’t look into their eyes, feel their touch, read their emotions, or in any other way physically interact with them.” Cyber-interactions feel more remote, and safer.” “We can be whoever we want to be…” CDG (p.43) warns of experiences where “addicts progressively go through stages in which they retreat further from the reality of friends, family, and work.” “Eventually, what other people know is a false identity.” “leading a fantasy double life is a distortion of reality.” “Addiction is a system, one with its own momentum.”  CDG (p.43) claims that “the addictive system has various component “parts,” the first of which is a belief system.” Most important to recognize is that the addiction begins with delusional thought processes, which are rooted in the individual’s belief system.” “That is these people begin with core beliefs about themselves that affect how they perceive reality.”

CDG (p.43) maintains that “each of us has a belief system that is the sum of the assumptions, judgments, and myths that we hold to be true.” “It contains potent family messages about our value or worth as people, our relationships, our basic needs, and our sexuality. It is continued, CDG (p.44) within it is a repertoire of what options-answers, solutions, methods, possibilities, and ways of behaving-are open to each of us.”In short, it is our view of the world.” Our belief system, therefore, filters through what behavioral conduct we make choices.” Coping mechanisms is another consideration when viewing addiction. Online experiences may reinforce unhealthy coping mechanisms learned earlier in life.  Dissociating mentally and emotionally helps one to detach from unsuccessful experiences. Interpersonal skills may not be practical on an emotional level in real life. Consequently, the person may become dependent on creating distance in real-life relationships which leads to prevention of intimacy.” CDG (p.45) state that the “Internet is a way to interact with others while keeping a barrier between you and other people.” “It is especially useful if you never learned healthy ways to engage with or relate to other people or if you don’t trust or feel safe with them.” “You can remain anonymous and distant and never have to reveal you true identity or anything else about yourself.”

“Cybersex provides the ultimate pseudo-connection with another person-the perfect impersonal personal relationship-with no hassles or demands or connection.” “Cybersex enables users to truly objectify the person on the other side of the computer connection.” CDG (p46).  “In many ways, according to CDG (p.46), the Internet allows people to create a kind of cyber-dissociation.” “They remain detached from those with whom they are interacting.” “The cyber-world offers the ultimate form of detachment.”

CDG (p.46) points out that with one’s belief system, when considering addictive behaviors, one creates  the set of interacting faulty beliefs. Furthermore, what develops are distorted views of reality and delusional thinking to support the sustainment of their behaviors.” “The delusional system provides the rationalization of justifying ones behaviors. With addictions, a preoccupation of what is important for oneself may even be perceived as a trancelike state.

Conclusion

For both Lou and Katherine, efforts to find online what they believed to be solutions to their relational problems were ultimately unsuccessful until, in the context of their therapeutic relationship with an analyst, their relational needs might be more directly and effectively addressed. For Katherine, the personal costs of this effort were small, and indeed, her genealogies likely provided her with a stronger sense of herself as a singular center of agency over the period of a lifetime, that facilitated consolidation of a more coherent sense of herself from without and within. But all these gains required confirmation from the analyst in order to have any prospect of becoming permanent in the face of challenges to her positive sense of herself from without and within. By contrast, Lou’s adventures in cyberspace stand as somewhat of a cautionary tale, not only in the treatment of compulsive sexual addictions, but also in terms of how the intervention of technology in human relationships may transform, and often depersonalize those bonds, and in the process may also worsen our sense of who we are.

As observed earlier, the development of the self is no longer based solely on face-to-face interactions with significant others and physically present peer groups. Information about us that influences how we think about ourselves also comes from Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, text messages, emails, chat rooms, blogs, sequentially listed “comments” on specific topics, and impersonal repositories of data. On one hand, for Katherine this may mean finding that 400 Facebook friends find her “likeable,” even if none of her intimate acquaintances and relatives do. For Lou, the potential to find sexual gratification online may have felt self-enhancing, even if his family relationships left him feeling insufficiently worthy and set aside. Through technology, we are able to meet an unlimited number of people and a large number of “friends.” Our online relationships may buttress our sense of who we are, and so we seek them out. But information about us from online sources arrives mediated through screens and typed words, in contrast to the personal interactions we have with people in our presence. Technology allows access to new data about ourselves from those who are in direct contact with us. That is one reason why both Katherine and Lou required face-to-face therapeutic relationships to consolidate any gains in self-enhancement they may have obtained through online connections.

There are no easy answers to the question of how technology is affecting our work; we can only say with certainty that it is, and that it will continue to in ways not easily predicted. Perhaps as our brains become rewired to cope with the changes in our technological environments, answers will come to us from places we do not yet know exist.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

References

 

Clark, A. (2003), Natural-born Cyborgs:  Minds, Technologies, and the Future of Human Intelligence. New York: Oxford University Press.

 

Goren, W. (2003), America’s Love Affair with Technology: The Transformation of

Sexuality and the Self over the 20th Century, Psychoanalytic Psychology, 20:487-508.

 

Hallak, A. (2014), Fun for Little Ones. Family Fun, ed. A. Hallak, 4:60j.

 

Rosen, L. (2012), iDisorder:  Understanding our Obsession with Technology and Overcoming Its Hold on Us. New York:  Palgrave Macmillin.

 

Stern, D. (1985), The Interpersonal World of the Infant: A View from Psychoanalysis and Developmental Psychology. U.S.:  Basic Books.

 

Stern, D. (1993), The Role of Feelings for an Interpersonal Self in the Perceived self: Ecological and Interpersonal Sources of Self-Knowledge. In: The Perceived Self, ed. U. Neisser, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Cambridge University Press, 205-215.

 

Tapscott, Don (2009), Grown Up Digital. New York:  McGraw-Hill.