Psychodynamics of the Technological Unconscious

The shadow of technological development has received significant attention. User tracking, emotional manipulation, disinformation, online radicalization, and restrictions on free speech have shattered the cyber-utopianism of the 1990s and early 2000s. Yet the solutions to address technology’s problems are framed as requiring more technology. This technological solutionism and its subsequent choices mask unconscious processes which give rise to new technologies. This essay is an attempt to interrogate the history of these choices by taking a depth psychological approach to the technological unconscious, beginning with the impact of writing on the psyche to the advent of computer screens. With technologies becoming more sophisticated and a primary way we interact with reality, it is vital to create a body of depth psychology literature on technology’s history and impacts.