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The book A Psychoanalytic Exploration of the Body in Today's World is a collection of essays born out of the APM (Association for Psychoanalytic Medicine) symposium On the Body in May 2016. Editor Vaia Tsolas introduces the volume's two intersecting vectors: the post-human effects of technological and medical advances along with sociological changes on behaviors, sexuality and psychosomatics of a body; and the near eclipse of the role of infantile sexuality and its relationship to repression and the body in many contemporary theoretical quarters of psychoanalysis. The body's bio-psycho-social provenance makes it the object of psychoanalytic inquiry. As such it provides an opportunity for a fascinating array of insights from a variety of perspectives.
This fertile creativity of contributions is the strength of the volume. Its kaleidoscopic richness is also a challenge. At 188 pages of length, with 12 essays grouped into 4 parts it invites to consider concentrated meditations on ideas about the role of drives, sexuality and gender in a spectral range from metapsychological to psychosomatic to familial to societal - a testament to the scope of the project. What adds to the complexity, and fascination, is the variety of theoretical lineages of the authors, their particular areas of theoretical and clinical research or added application of interdisciplinary instruction.
In Part I The Body in Our Changing World, citing social studies research, Sherry Turkle alerts to the seductions of sidelining the body by the societal proliferation of digital age technologies and their insidious effects on human interactions. Disembodied simulation strips empathy of authenticity, and diminished opportunities for solitude impoverish the experience of being with oneself - the building block for connecting with others. The nature of presence in psychoanalytic situation in the context of phone or Skype sessions comes into question.
Robert Paul applies an anthropological lens of the Dual Inheri