ABSTRACT
This conclusion presents some closing thoughts on the key concepts discussed in this book. The book argues that psychoanalysis's developmental perspective and its understanding of psychosexuality and of the challenges posed by intimacy render it uniquely placed to provide some benchmarks for evaluating the relational and societal changes mediated by technology. Technological mediation has truly become a defining condition of contemporary culture. Psychoanalytic theory and practice needs to be articulated within this new context. Unsurprisingly psychoanalytic theory bears the traces of the Victorian culture in which it originally evolved. Freud's developmental theories reflect the social realities of his time: a child growing up in relation to a small circle of adults who organised the child's libido in relation to those adults. In digital times a child's body is no longer primarily libidinised through his identifications with parents. A fused machine–body desire solicits the child and prepares the body outside of the classic Oedipal paradigm.
