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There could not have been a timelier book written right now than Danielle Knafo and Rocco Lo Bosco's book, The Age of Perversion: Desire and Technology in Psychoanalysis and Culture. Ever since Danielle Knafo spoke about the very same subject in Vienna last year, her sharp analysis of how technology has pervaded the most intimate human relationships and has replaced the human body with highly stylized silicone dolls or robotic devices has never left my mind. Nearly every week, I would find articles in various newspapers alerting and alarming their readers how robots were taking over our lives, be it in intimate affairs, the war, or even now in agriculture as a means of replacing migrant workers, who are no longer allowed into the USA because of Trump's immigration policies. Wherever there is a lack, loss, or danger, a life-like doll or an almost human look -a-like robot can serve as a substitute and take over the task deemed to be too threatening, both physically and emotionally, to the human body.
One powerful argument threading its way through Knafo and Lo Bosco's book is that “as we are becoming to some extent dehumanized, our objects, especially our electronic devices, are becoming increasingly humanized” (xv).
Before Knafo leads the reader into her own consulting room with her patient Jack, who suffers from intimacy problems, having been married and divorced twice, she offers a remarkable summary of various psychoanalytic theories about perversion. That first chapter alone could serve as a much-needed text to teach perversion at our institutes. It is a clever way to start her book, since one or the other theory presented in the first chapter percolates in the reader's mind as various cultures of techno-perversion; black markets for organs, guns, and drugs; and sex trafficking are elucidated in this book. Knafo's survey reaches from Stoller's theory that perversion is mise-en-scène, involving risk-taking and danger activities which were once experienced as being t