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The main contributors to this volume come from Italy (Antonio Ferro, Marco Longo, Andrea Marzi, Valeria Egidi Morpurgo, Michele G. Sforza, Riccardo Sorrenti), while it also features a London-based perspective (Giuseppina Antinucci and Marcus Johns), and an essay from Buenos Aires (David Rosenfeld). It is no surprise to the reader that the struggles to understand cyberspace are as global as they are generational. The trouble and hopefully the opportunity, however, is that most psychoanalysts trained and learned about the psyche during a time when cyberspace did not exist. This makes them ‘cyberspace immigrants’ (born before ) attempting to connect to a world of ‘cyberspace natives’ (born after ) (Barlow 1996). This decisive line has undoubtedly changed how we relate and connect to our patients in this cyber-world. This volume explores and deliberates about these evolving cyber-issues in three distinct sections: Part 1: ‘Cyberspace, Cybernetics, and Society’; Part 2: ‘Identity in Cyberspace’; and Part 3: ‘Virtual Space and Clinical Psychoanalysis’.
Antonio Ferro, in a foreword, frames these essays stating that the average age of a psychoanalyst is nearly 70, and he considers whether analytic institutions should ‘be laboratories for research and not embalming parlours for what is already known’ (page xvi). I can appreciate Ferro's directness insofar as there can be confusion in psychoanalytic institutes regarding how exactly, if at all, to grasp the issues and problems of cyberspace. I found that this book offers a sound structure from which to bridge one's more mature ‘cyber-immigrant’ psyche with the younger ‘cyber-native’ psyche. The editor, Andrea Marzi, has assembled a diverse tour of cyberspace from simple to complex. This is by no means an easy read, and it is not something to read only once. I considered that it might be handy only as a cyberspace reference, but nonetheless, I believe that it will be helpful for both the younger and older generations of psychoth