Afterword: Reclaiming Psychoanalysis: Sherry Turkle in Conversation With the Editors

Abstract

In conversation with the editors, Turkle discusses the challenges and opportunities facing psychoanalysts today. She describes how people use digital life to flee what they find messy and complex in human conversation. She suggests that psychoanalysis has a special role to play in contemporary life in arguing for the importance of the capacity for boredom, solitude, and self-reflection. Whatever the practicalities of remote treatment, psychoanalysis needs to more embrace and understand more deeply the intimate conversational exchange that can only take place when people are bodies together. The afterword concludes by asserting that by reclaiming conversation, we can reclaim psychoanalysis.