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I found this paper, written by one of our profession's foremost practitioners and researchers, thought-provoking, challenging and occasionally somewhat mind-boggling. For the latter reason I was grateful to have had the opportunity to read it rather than hear it, for it forms part of a collection of keynote speeches which were published in advance of being delivered at the 49th IPA Conference in Boston, USA, in July 2015, entitled ‘Changing world: the shape and use of psychoanalytic tools today’.
Like many, Lemma is concerned about what changes she feels the profession may need to make to accommodate to the changing world. In her view it is ‘our willingness to engage with technoculture and with other disciplines that can help us to understand these changes, and to be open to how this may require us to revisit cherished assumptions’ (p. 570).
Conscious of my own ambivalence towards things technical, it felt like a wonderful piece of synchronicity when, at the very moment I sat down to begin this review, my 25-year-old younger son out of the blue FaceTimed me from New York, excitedly asking whether I recognized where he was, which happened to be a place we had visited as a family many years before, prior to the advent of smartphones. I marvelled at the wonders of technology as I could both see and hear him so clearly that it felt as if I could almost reach out and touch him. This made Lemma's article and some of the points and questions she raises resonate more. As indicated by her title she is particularly interested in the fate of the body in virtual space, arguing that far from being a place for ‘a pure meeting of minds…. When in cyberspace we are still embodied’ (p. 572, italics in original).
Lemma is clearly very familiar with technology and the multitude of uses to which it is being put in a way in which some of our profession, perhaps particularly older members, may not be. Undoubtedly this is partly generational but also perhaps a reflection of where she works an