Psychotechnical Becomings

Psychotechnical Becomings draws on contemporary philosophy and media theory to offer a groundbreaking reimagining of psychoanalysis for the digital age, showing how technology shapes human subjectivity across all ages. Introducing innovative concepts such as technoplasticity, psychotechnical becoming, algorithmically mediated projective identification, digital armouring, and the digital superego, the book investigates how algorithmic architectures infiltrate unconscious processes. Through vivid clinical cases and interdisciplinary theory, the book demonstrates how psychoanalytic techniques can restore depth to a flattened psychic field, tracing how identity is shaped by algorithms, desire circulates within feedback loops, and mourning unfolds in a world where absence can be endlessly deferred. The book also addresses the ethical complexities of online therapy, asking how presence and truth can be sustained in digitally configured encounters. Readers will gain a deeper understanding of how technology amplifies both defensive mechanisms and creative adaptations, requiring clinicians to engage with patients whose psychic lives are deeply entwined with digital environments. Drawing on Lemma's extensive clinical experience, this book is key reading for psychoanalysts, psychotherapists, and anyone wanting to understand how technology has shaped our psychic life and identity.

Alessandra Lemma is Visiting Professor in the Psychoanalysis Unit at University College London, UK, Consultant at the Anna Freud Centre, and Visiting Professor, Centro Winnicott, Italy. She is the recipient of several awards, including the Sigourney Award (2022), the Scharff Award (2025), and the Bernard Rattigan Award for Psychoanalysis and Diversity (2025), and is a Fellow of the British Psychoanalytic Society.

Introduction: Beyond Content: When the Medium Stages Becoming Part I. Algorithms, Desire, and the Reconfigured Self 1. Rethinking Subjectivity and Development in the Digital Age 2. Dialogues on the Digital Psyche 3. From Scrolling Through to Working Through: Adolescence, Algorithms, and the Search for Coherence 4. At the Meniscus of Self-Understanding: Rethinking the Examined Life in an Age of Artificial Intelligence 5. The Mediation of Desire 6. On Not Having It All: The Fetishisation of Trans Women in Online Pornography Part II. Screen to Skin: From Defensive Fictions to Embodied Presence 7. The Truth in Lying 8. Mediated Presence: Bodies and Screens in the Analytic Space 9. The Digital Superego: Embodiment Under the Algorithmic Gaze 10. From Prosthesis to Presence 11. Mourning, Melancholia, and Machines Conclusion: Psychoanalysis at the Interface