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In our advanced technological culture the body can readily be transcended rather than accepted as a cornerstone of reality. It can be corrected, transformed, or altogether bypassed, as we saw in the case of cosmetic surgery (see Chapter 1). In this sense so-called progress may fuel the fantasy that we can exist, to borrow Ewald’s telling phrase (1993), in an ‘order of pure decision’.
In this chapter I want to focus on a particular kind of technological development – the domain of cyberspace1 – and to consider the fate of the body in cyberspace. More specifically, I will explore how retreat into cyberspace may be used by some young people as a way of bypassing the psychic implications of being-in-a-body and the related anxieties. This focus may help us understand clinical presentations during adolescence in which the young person is referred with an ‘addiction’ to cyberspace and in which anxieties rooted in the body – sometimes specifically focused on its appearance – may not be apparent at first assessment.
I will start by describing how virtual space can lend itself to being used as a psychotic enclave that can become especially compelling for vulnerable adolescents due to the demands made on the mind by the physical changes of puberty. Through my work with an adolescent girl and an adolescent boy, I will then illustrate how virtual spaces allow the individual to manage confusion and distress about the real body. Here, the self ’s integrity is sustained through pseudo-representations of the body that are defensively experienced in terms of ‘it’s just a game’ rather than as pathology, and that create obstacles to the invitation by the analyst to reflect on the function of cyberspace in the individual’s experience, especially that of being-in-a-body.
The term cyberspace refers to a computer-generated space that is viewed by the participant and responds to stimuli from the participant. It is populated by a range of cyberne