Symbolization in the digital era is the melancholy of broken mirrors

Psychoanalytical psychotherapy

Abstract

Through theoretical psychoanalytic concepts from Freud to the present day, the significance that symbolization has in psychoanalysis is shown. Language and speech are the most effective way of forming representations, developing thinking and identity of the subject. Speech exposes affects and conflicts, creating palettes of meanings that allow a person to develop mentally and symbolize and appropriate experiences, including traumatic ones. The opportunity to name is an opportunity to cope mentally, which means to develop thinking and self. Digital reality, being a totally perceptual sphere, kills representation, which is possible only in the absence of an object. In the digital world, everything is visualized, everything personal is replaced with universal, words are replaced with punctuation marks and emojis, emotions are replaced with likes and views, humor is replaced with memes. Speech also becomes affectively flattened, avoiding conflicts. Digital communication is directive – it dictates the rules for obtaining approval and contact, defiantly ignoring everything personal. With the apparent variety of forms and accessibility of communication, people experience loneliness online, falling into melancholy. The inability to live through the loss of an object, since it has never been found, entails a narcissistic attitude towards objects – they are all just mirrors. Such objects are not invested, are partial and replaceable, and therefore, there is no development through the grief of their loss. Using the example of psychoanalytic psychotherapy of patients of the Zoomer generation, the author reflects on what is the reverse way of giving verbal, mental meaning to the patient's experiences, encrypted in the stingy language of digital reality.