Prologue

There has been a veritable explosion of both popular and scientific articles about the nature and impact of emerging information technologies in which the term cyberspace has come to refer to the experience of accessing digital information with the experience of being in an alternate physical space. However, the presence of the Internet now has become more pervasive, one in which we are virtually embedded, and which has become an inescapable aspect of life rather than another world that we periodically access. Todd Essig has contributed a timely and cogent article that opens this issue in which he observes that “the reality of contemporary life is the utter impossibility of ever being able to ‘jack-out’ and not be connected to information sources.” Essig also examines what he views as a “troubling disconnect” between psychoanalysis and the wider culture, one that he believes is enacted in the very title of our issue.

The impact of cyberspace upon the ongoing construction of identity, subjectivity, and agency is thought by many to have been profound. Several contributors to this issue examine the impact of these technologies upon the nature of the very cornerstones of psychological life, such as the development of somatic and sexual identity (Isaac Tylim and Robert Galatzer-Levy, this issue), as well as the impact of loss and mourning upon the development of character and relational capacities (Stephen Hartman, this issue; Todd Essig, this issue). Some of the contributors to this issue will examine the impact of cyberspace upon the analytic encounter (Kohn and Roth, this issue) and (Dini, this issue). Finally, in a short article that she ironically labels “Post-script”, Bonnie Litowitz comments on how changes in communication shape both individuals and larger cultures in their capacity for thinking and relating. Whether or not one disapproves of contemporary culture's increasing immersion in and reliance upon information technologies, it is clear that “the ele