Summary: “Whither Psychoanalysis in Computer Culture”

In “Whither Psychoanalysis in Computer Culture,” Sherry Turkle (2004) explores how the basic principles of psychoanalysis, including object-relations theory, can provide a theory for understanding our changing relationships with computational objects (like computers) and relational artifacts (like robots and Furbies).

She explores this in three ways: our relationships with our computers and other digital devices, our relationships with each other through computers, and our relationships with relational artifacts.

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Our Individual Relationships with Our Computers

In this section, Turkle analyzes two related aspects of this relationship. The first regards the fact that the computer offers an illusion of perfection, and that this dynamic might compel both the gamer and the writer. The second relates to the fact that we increasingly rely on our computers to thwart loneliness, at least in part because the computer cannot make the same demands as a human companion.

Our Relationships with Each Other Through Computers

In this section, Turkle reviews the way cyberspace allows us to play with identity and explore multiple selves. She evokes Erikson’s concept of a “psychosocial moratorium” (22) to describe the way that virtual communities offer a safe space to play with our identities in the service of developing a “core self” (22).  But, as her analysis expands, she describes how poststructuralist theories of a decentered self are made more concrete by our experiences in cyberspace. In this way, we need to look at the computer not only as an object of theory but also as something that has the power to affect and change the way we think about and experience identity.

Our Relationships with Relational Artifacts

In this section, Turkle looks to the future of AI and its impact on human culture. What is the status (and nature) of machines that (who?) increasingly blur the line between nature and culture, self and other, human and machine?  She calls on us not to focus on how human machines will become but on how they affect us as users.  How might they change our understanding of mortality and love?

Conclusion

Looking again to the future, Turkle implores us to think of technologically inevitable intersubjective relations between the human self and the technological other. What are the moral and ethical consequences? Where does this leave psychoanalysis as a mode of understanding? She argues that it would be a mistake to abandon psychoanalysis in this brave new world.  According to Turkle, we need “complexity” and “ambivalence” in our computer culture: “We must cultivate the richest possible language and methodologies for talking about our increasingly emotional relationships with artifacts” (29).