Your Smartphone Is Watching You: Evocative Objects of Influence and Fear of Breakdown

Abstract

In his seminal paper on the origin of “The Influencing Machine,” Victor Tausk discussed the structure of a paranoid delusion that expressed itself through the fear of influence by a mystical and capricious machine. Today, we can speak about a different delusional structure that chooses digital objects for its manifestation. While Tausk's influencing machine largely controls the mind and body with little experience of agency by the passive ego as a subject, today's smart digital machines have become an external part of the mind. Yet the delusion of the influencing machine is much more ubiquitous and nuanced than what Tausk presented, and is not restricted to the schizophrenic or psychotic. It may be even seen as simply the manifest content of an unconscious phantasy that universally inhabits our psychic space, taking different forms depending on the culture of the time and the type of psychopathology. We present a detailed clinical vignette of a young college student whose fear of breakdown and the loss of...