Attempting a metapsychology for tele-copresence

Abstract

The concepts of immersion and digital presence have been widely used in the human–computer interaction and virtual environment research fields and have been particularly valuable when it comes to a better understanding of tele-therapy, tele-analysis, and other forms of tele-linking. Using a metapsychological perspective, we will attempt a psychoanalytic interpretation of these phenomena. We will conceptualize them as hypnoid states that reflect a compromise between internal and external conditions, including specific defensive mechanisms and psychic dynamics. This conceptualization will be applied to the tele-analytic situation and other relevant fields of application.

Key words:

• tele-copresence
• tele-linking
• presence
• immersion
• virtual-digital

Notes

1 An adapted and extended version of the paper read at the XXIIth IFPS Forum, Central Panel, Friday October 21, 2022, Centro Psicoanalítico de Madrid, Madrid, Spain.

2 We will not distinguish between related uses, sometimes separated phenomenologically or by intensity gradients, between immersion as absorption, envelopment, involvement, and even sometimes flow. But we will distinguish it from the idea of ⁣⁣presence.

3 Some developments, such as Riva and collaborators’ model of presence as an expression of the self (Riva, Waterworth, & Waterworth, 2004; Riva, Waterworth, Waterworth, & Mantovani, 2011), defy this generalization. However, it shares the limitations of most positivist psychological frames in that they are trapped in bio-automatisms (e.g., the pre-reflective self) and in conscious motivational aspects, which vastly underrepresents the dynamic factor of the psyche, and do not accept notions such as the unconscious overdetermination or the work of the negative.

4 I base my assumptions on the premise of an ego that includes living responsiveness as one of its defining features.

5 In moments of presence the virtual-digital reality becomes the only reality.

6 Immersion shifts the “balance” of coexisting virtual-digital and tangible-material reality scenes, favoring the interest, objectification, and qualification of the virtual-digital environment as a potentially responsive otherness, while decreasing interest in and attention to the sensory and living qualities of the tangible-material.

7 The near-hallucinatory quality of presence states is based on the negative hallucination of the tangible-material reference.

8 We must also consider the psychic tolerance for the near-hallucinatory.

9 This may also allow us to understand why in tele-analysis (unlike other digital activities) presence is expressed as “fleeting moments” that are so dependent upon the conditions of the analytic process and its dynamics, in addition to relational, situational, and technological conditions. A related question is whether an analytic work carried out electronically can become a proper psychoanalytic process and what would be the role of these moments of presence in it. The value given to the need of a regression for any analysis, as well as shared figurability-work (Botella & Botella, 2005), is involved in this question.

10 For reasons of length, this final section was not included in the original presentation.

11 Acting out disorganization and antisocial tendencies can be alternatives to the extent of hope in reparation.

12 Sometimes also restlessness and exasperation.

13 Should we find here a source for our renewed cultural fascination with the living dead?

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Lucio Alberto Gutiérrez Herane

Lucio Alberto Antonio Gutiérrez Herane holds a doctorate in psychotherapy research from Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile. He is a psychoanalyst and full member of the Chilean Society of Psychoanalysis (ICHPA), as well as an academic and training supervisor. He is a past president of ICHPA and alternate member of the International Federation of Psychoanalytic Societies executive board.

Dr. Gutiérrez works in private practice, treating adolescents and adults and consulting parents on issues concerning modern upbringing. He has also established a longstanding line of conceptual and clinical research on how humans interact with the virtual-digital, based on Freudian–Winnicottian metapsychology.

Dr. Gutiérrez has published in various local and international journals as well as compilation books. His paper “Silicon in ‘pure gold’? Theoretical contributions and observations on tele-analysis by videoconference” (Gutiérrez, 2016) reached The International Journal of Psychoanalysis annual selection and was published in English, Spanish, and German.