The Routledge International Handbook of Psychoanalysis, Subjectivity, and Technology

"Open this handbook with great care, for in it you will find a mirror (at times, a black mirror) reflecting a contemporary vision and analysis of yourself, your world, and the technologies that shape you. Psychoanalysis becomes the perfect tool for exploring how we live with and are lived by technology, and this book digs deep into the theory, practice, and process of living in a world transformed by the machines we create."

-Jack Foehl, President, Boston Psychoanalytic Society & Institute

"If one were able to go back in time and tell Louis XIV, in all his glory, that in our times one can have a warm home equipped with hot running waters throughout the winter and a cool breeze in his bedchamber all summer long and do so effortlessly; or the means to illuminate every corner in his rooms and every room in his house at will; or to have any meal or drink his appetite might fancy delivered to him within the hour at his door; or have his coffee made at the press of a button; or to have the uncanny ability to summon in his presence the representations of absent people, whether living or dead, hear them talking and talk with them as if they were present, and, in short, all of the other abilities modern technology makes possible to us, he would say that these are powers unfathomable even to a Sun King, to be assigned perhaps only to a god, even if, as Freud aptly put it, a prosthetic god.

And if one were able to go back in time and tell King Solomon, in all his wisdom, that such god-like powers have been given to all, from haughty rulers to humble parlormaids, and given equally, he would question whether our powerful devices have made the latter any happier or the former wiser than him. It takes an analytic approach, as Freud again rightly notes, to untangle the tele-technological enigma. And it is to our great benefit that this handbook begins the work of doing just that."

- John Panteleimon Manoussakis, Associate Professor of Philosophy, College of the Holy Cross