Whither Psychoanalysis in Computer Culture?

Abstract

The computer as an “object to think with” enters into how people think about their minds in several ways. First, it serves as a model of mind, both historically and in contemporary neuroscience and neuropsychology. Second, the computer enters into our thinking about mind through our everyday interactions with computational objects. In recent years, people have embarked on a range of new “intersubjective” relationships, some of which, albeit problematically, have taken machines as subjects. Understanding these forms of interaction—on eo n one with computers, on the Internet, in virtual realities, and with robotic creatures—calls for psychodynamic modes of understanding. New computational objects in the culture serve as “objects to think with” for a revitalized psychoanalytic discourse. Over 20 years ago, as a new faculty member at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), I taught an introductory class on psychoanalytic theory. For one meeting, early in the semester, I had assigned Freud’s chapters on slips of the tongue from The Psychopathology of Everyday Life (1901/1960b). I began class by reviewing Freud’s first example: The chairman of a parliamentary session begins the meeting by declaring it closed. Freud’s analysis centered on the possible reasons behind the chairman’s slip—for example, he might be anxious about what the parliamentarians had on their agenda. Freud’s analysis turned on trying to uncover the hidden meaning behind the chairman’s remark. The theoretical effort was to understand his mixed emotions, his unconscious ambivalence.