Human virtuality and digital life. Philosophical and psychoanalytic Investigations

This book is a psychoanalytic and philosophical exploration of how the digital is transforming our perception of the world and our understanding of ourselves. Drawing on examples from everyday life, myth, and popular culture, this book argues that virtual reality is just the latest instantiation of the phenomenon of the virtual, which is intrinsic to being human. It sheds light on what is at stake in our understanding of the relationship between the virtual and the real, showing how our current technologies enhance and diminish our psychological lives. The authors assert that technology is a drug — both a remedy and a poison — and in their writings exemplify a method that transcends the polarization that forces us to consider it as either a liberating force or a dangerous threat to human life. The digital revolution challenges us to consider the implications of what is called our post-human condition, leaving behind our modern conception of the world as constituted by timeless essences and reconceiving it instead as one of processes and change. The book’s final note considers the sudden immersion in the virtual brought about by the global pandemic of 2020. Accessible and far-reaching, this book will appeal not only to psychotherapists, psychoanalysts, and philosophers, but to anyone interested in the ways in which virtuality and the digital are transforming our contemporary lives.