Psychoanalysis and Digital Culture

Audiences, Social Media, and Big Data

Jacob Johanssen

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781351052047
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Ciencia de la computación
• Subtopic: Medios digitales

Psychoanalysis and Digital Culture offers a comprehensive account of our contemporary media environment—digital culture and audiences in particular—by drawing on psychoanalysis and media studies frameworks. It provides an introduction to the psychoanalytic affect theories of Sigmund Freud and Didier Anzieu and applies them theoretically and methodologically in a number of case studies. Johanssen argues that digital media fundamentally shape our subjectivities on affective and unconscious levels, and he critically analyses phenomena such as television viewing, Twitter use, affective labour on social media, and data-mining.

How does watching television involve the body? Why are we so drawn to reality television?

Why do we share certain things on social media and not others? How are bodies represented on social media?

How do big data and data mining influence our identities? Can algorithms help us make better decisions?

These questions amongst others are addressed in the chapters of this wide-ranging book. Johanssen shows in a number of case studies how a psychoanalytic angle can bring new insights to audience studies and digital media research more generally. From audience research with viewers of the reality television show Embarrassing Bodies and how they unconsciously used it to work through feelings about their own bodies, to a critical engagement with Hardt and Negri's notion of affective labour and how individuals with bodily differences used social media for their own affective-digital labour, the book suggests that an understanding of affect based on Freud and Anzieu is helpful when thinking about media use. The monograph also discusses the perverse implications of algorithms, big data and data mining for subjectivities. In drawing on empirical data and examples throughout, Johanssen presents a compelling analysis of our contemporary media environment.

1 Audiences, Affect, and the Unconscious

This chapter provides a detailed engagement with the works of Sigmund Freud and Didier Anzieu. It lays the groundwork for much of the theoretical framework of this book. I present and develop two main topics: Freud’s theory of affect and Anzieu’s theory of the skin ego. First, specific points of Freud’s work (Freud 1981a, b, c, d, e, f, g, h, i, k) [1895, 1892, 1894, 1900, 1912, 1915, 1933, 1925, 1927] and how André Green (1999) and Ruth Stein (1999) developed his notion of affect are outlined. Second, I introduce the notion of the skin ego as proposed by Didier Anzieu (2016) [1985].

I argue that by drawing on the Freudian definition of affect, bodily responses to media use (and, e.g., their verbalisations in interviews) can be theorised in a manner that takes the unconscious and conscious into account. As will be discussed, for Freud, an affective state can (but does not have to) be a response to an external situation (Freud 1981a,b). It is his model that is important for the wider theoretical framework of this book because it allows me to theorise the affective experiences of media use that occur in a rhythmic manner. I then draw on Lisa Cartwright (2008) and Misha Kavka (2009) and their use of Freudian affect when analysing film and reality television. Cartwright regards affect as something that always needs to be seen in relation to representation. In engaging with a Freudian conception of affect, I am able to map out its complex relationship to the conscious and unconscious, to language, the body, the subject and the social – and most importantly to media use.

Furthermore, Freud’s emphasis on affects as sensual experiences is a key reference point when understanding Anzieu (2016) and the interactions through skin between the mother and baby. Following on from the discussion of Freudian affect, the sections ‘Freud and Affect’ and ‘Affect and Audio-Visual Representation: The Project as a Scene of Earliest Communication’ discuss the Freudian ego as a protective shield (Freud 1991a,b) [1920, 1923] and examine how Didier Anzieu (2016) took up this notion in his book The Skin Ego. André Green (1999) suggested that the Freudian theory of affect may sound too metapsychological and abstract at times. A more nuanced and palpable account of the nature of relational, affective experiences is beneficial (see also Stein 1999, 132). Additionally, I argue that the Freudian notion of affect does not adequately take into account the social world and the relational dimensions of interpersonal encounters. It is too narrowly focussed on the individual subject (Diamond 2013a). I outline the developmental and process-like nature of affect by shifting the focus to its social and relational dimensions by drawing on Anzieu (2016) and his more phenomenological discussion of the role of the skin in affective-sensual communication between baby and mother/father and others (Segal 2009; Diamond 2013a).

Anzieu argued that the baby forms an image of sharing a common skin with the mother that is rooted in the material, sensual experiences of being touched, kissed, held, rocked, and so on. The skin ego prefigures the ego and its capacity for reflexivity. Affective communication plays an important role in this concept. Anzieu makes it clear that the common skin is based on the illusion that the mother and baby’s skin are the same. This is a soothing illusion that, I argue, media may offer to subjects in a related manner. One could say that media use often ‘envelops’ the viewer in a safe space. Yet the skin ego is not fully closed but is permeable and the skin also consists of orifices. Disruptive experiences of the skin/ego as other, as being broken and damaged, may also be evoked in viewers. In particular, the close-ups of surgery, torn and irritated flesh, and skin eruptions may remind the viewers of problems with their bodies, and it is in such moments that viewers experience a flooding of affect, leading them to react bodily.

Psychoanalysis and Affect

Since the publication and translation of two key books on psychoanalytic theories of affect by André Green (1999) and Ruth Stein (1999), there has been an increased interest in the subject in psychoanalytic circles. Green argued that it had been more or less neglected by post-Freudian analysts, and his efforts can be seen as important in revitalising interests in affect. Famous analysts such as Winnicott, Klein, or Bion showed little interest in affect. Jacques Lacan had similarly neglected affect (Green 1999, 99; Stein 1999, 133). A similar criticism of Lacan was put forward by Jean Laplanche (1999, 18). Collette Soler (2016) has argued in her recent book Lacanian Affects that Lacan did in fact consider affects. It is Lacan’s Seminar X on anxiety that puts affect on the agenda (Lacan 2014). Lacan has indeed emphasised the affective dimensions of anxiety and this remains an impressive development. A more holistic treatment of affects, however, is difficult to find within Lacan’s texts. Soler writes that, for Lacan, the first instance of being affected is when the subject enters the symbolic order via the mirror stage. The signifier ‘affects the bodily individual that is thereby made into a subject’ (Soler 2016, 53). Soler places an emphasis on the relationship between affect and language when she writes that

Language is the affecting party that passes over to the real by latching onto the bodily jouissance that it affects. The subject produced as an effect is affected by the status of this jouissance.

(Soler 2016, 59)

This establishes a relationality between language and the subject who is affected by it, but the specific role of affect is left unexplained here. I also do not think that the notion of jouissance is particularly helpful when it comes to thinking about affect. Soler then goes on to comment on, what she calls ‘Lacanian affects’ (ibid., 68), namely anxiety (or anguish), sadness, joyful knowledge, boredom, anger, and shame. While she describes affect as something ‘formless, unspeakable, and, furthermore, highly personal’ (ibid., 5), there is nonetheless a strong anchoring in the discursive, as indicated by the various terms that designate affective states. There is some similarity between her discussion of affects, as bodily experiences that are then attempted to be signified by the subject, and the Freudian affect model, but I argue that returning to Freud helps us to find more comprehensive ideas on affect than Lacan’s. Freud and Anzieu also allow for a more phenomenological conceptualisation of affect than Lacan’s structuralist models that place such a strong emphasis on language and the role of the signifier.

The psychologist Silvan S. Tomkins has also been influential for scholars in the social sciences and humanities (e.g., Sedgwick 2003; Gibbs 2011). Drawing partly on Freud, he (1962) defined affect as referring to nine specific physiological reactions which are present from birth, such as enjoyment/joy, interest/excitement, surprise/startle, distress/anguish, anger/rage, disgust/contempt, shame/humiliation, and fear/terror. Tomkins saw emotions as the products of affects coupled with memories of previous experiences or thoughts of that affective experience. Affective experiences are similar to drives, in so far as both are activated and reduced by stimuli and responses. He regarded affects as sets of neurological, facial, and physiological responses to experiences that originate outside or inside the body. For him, affects are always psychosocial because they are experienced by an individual as a bodily state that is communicated outwards to the social world at the same time: for example, through screaming, lowering the gaze, or blushing (Gibbs 2011, 255). This model limits affects to hard wired states. As we shall see, the Freudian model is more open in that respect.

While, as mentioned in the Introduction, application of psychoanalytic affect theories in media and cultural studies has been relatively limited compared to non-psychoanalytic affect theories, there are some scholars who have drawn on the Freudian model. These can be broadly, if crudely, grouped according to common interests and attentions. One author may of course belong to more than one group and spill over into another category. This, by no means exhaustive, list is merely drawn up as a way of orientation. There are, to begin with, clinical-theoretical works on (Freudian) psychoanalysis and affect: Mikkel Borch-Jacobsen (1993) offers a critical discussion of affect and of Freudian psychoanalysis as a whole. Many authors (e.g., Rapaport 1953; Basch 1976; Green 1999; Stein 1999; Esteban Muñoz 2009; Spezzano 2013) have offered meta-commentaries on the role of affect within psychoanalysis. I return to Green’s and Stein’s discussions at numerous times throughout this book.

There are also theoretical works on affect, or the nature of affect as a category: In her extensive engagement with (and critique of some) affect theories, Margaret Wetherell (2012, Chapter 6), has commented on and reworked Feud’s notion of affect. While she is critical of the Freudian unconscious and his theory of repression, her notion of ‘affective-discursive practice[s]’ (Wetherell 2012, 83) is very useful in combination with Freud. I return to it later in this chapter. I also agree with her emphasis on conceptualising affect as something subjective yet social. As mentioned in the Introduction, one of the most important critiques and productive development of psychoanalysis and affect theory has been articulated by Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari (1983, 1987). Guattari has also written about affect elsewhere (e.g., 1990, 2005). Adrian Johnston and Catherine Malabou’s (2013) Self and Emotional Life can be named here too. In this impressive work, they engage with questions on the unconscious nature of affects for Freud as well as on wider issues around the relationship between philosophy, neuroscience, and psychoanalysis. Karyn Ball (Ball 2015) has related Freud’s ideas on affect to Marx’s theory of labour and discusses the economics, as their energetic foundations, of both (see also the edited collection by Ball 2007). Ranjana Khanna (2012) has drawn on Freud and deconstructionism to argue that affect functions as an interface between the subject and something beyond it. I return to this notion when discussing Anzieu’s skin ego interface later in the chapter.

There are works on affect, the representational and (media) technologies: Marie-Luise Angerer (2015) has drawn on Freud, amongst other affect theorists, to explore the changing ontological status of sexuality in (relation to) contemporary digital cultures. Patricia Ticineto Clough’s work makes numerous references to Freud (e.g., Clough 2000a,b, 2008, 2009). She, similar to Massumi (2002) and other affect theorists, argues that affect is something beyond the subject and discourse and essentially moves through subjects and is only subsequently registered. Clough has a particular interest in technologies. Her early work (2000) presented an interest in but also critique of Freudian psychoanalysis when she identified the need to move away from the notion of the Freudian unconscious in favour of the reworking of psychoanalysis by Deleuze and Guattari. Writing about television, she argued that it ‘operates on the unconscious of the circuit, befitting the notion of the machinic assemblage. Television gives the thought of an unconscious that is irreducible to human subjectivity’ (Clough 2000a, 71). For her, contemporary societies are structured by affectivity as a force that operates through biopolitics and code, thereby modulating populations (Clough 2013). I return to some of these questions and their implications for subjectivities in the book’s Conclusion. Other works in this category have used Freud for thinking about the representational realm (e.g., Cronan 2013) or technologies such as artificial intelligence (Wilson 2010) or tracking apps (Gutierrez 2016).

Scholarship on cultural texts, literature and literary criticism: Most notably, Sara Ahmed (2004, 2014) has specifically drawn on Freud in her work on different emotions and their cultural politics as well as affect/emotion as a form of capital. While she rejects the ‘inside-outside model of emotions’ (Ahmed 2014, 6) and is thereby also in a way rejecting the Freudian discharge model of affect without saying so, her work nonetheless shows the value of the Freudian affect/idea distinction when analysing affectivity within texts and their cultural implications. Sianne Ngai’s Ugly Feelings (2005) teases out negative affects and their expressions in literature, film, and theoretical works (see also Sedgwick and Frank’s (2007) work on shame as well as Wilson 2004). Dina Georgis (2013) uses a Freudian lens (along with queer theory) to think about the use of collective stories and storytelling as responses to trauma, war, and genocide. Her book places a focus on emotion and affect through close readings of texts. Eugenie Brinkema (2014) also connects affect to the representational realm (cinematic and literary texts). In her book, she refers to Freud’s writings on emotion, mourning, the uncanny, and anxiety, but not specifically to his ideas on affect. Christopher Breu (2014) theorises materiality and the body in relation to biopolitics through literature. This is done by drawing on Freud, Lacan, and other thinkers. Robbie McLaughlan (2015) has connected Freud’s thinking on affect to that of Deleuze and Guattari. He relates it to Proust and how the death drive can be found within literature. Greg Seigworth (2003, see also Seigworth and Gregg, 2010) has discussed the Freudian notion of affect in relation to Deleuze and Guattari (1983, 1987). He considers affect as an intersubjective space and modality between individuals. It is worth quoting the following, beautiful passage at length:

In an encounter with either [music or infants], there are moments of unspeakable, unlocatable sensation that regularly occur: something outside of (beyond, alongside, before, between, etc.) words. For instance, what is it that transpires in the flash of your baby’s smile as you walk through the door, exhausted, at the end of the day? What is it that instantaneously evaporates and what happens as something else takes its place?

(Seigworth 2003, 85)

This idea of affect as an intersubjective modality and space is picked up again when discussing Anzieu later in this chapter.

While the authors cited earlier have all engaged with Freud and his conceptualisation of affect to varying degrees, a detailed discussion of his ideas is missing from such works. I shall do so in the next section. Freudian affect has also not really been used in empirical research which would be more closely linked to the social sciences than the humanities.

Freud and Affect

Sigmund Freud used the term ‘affect’ (Freud 1981a) [1895] early in his works when describing a subjective bodily state. Freud’s early, so-called ‘discharge model’ marks the beginning of his affect theory (Green 1999, 21), and this chapter (chronologically) discusses other notions that subsequently informed the developments of his thinking.

For Freud, affects are subjective bodily states. In particular, his early theory of the mind was based partly on a model of energy (entropy). His work on hysteria [1883] focussed on an excess form of energy in the patient that demonstrated itself in hysterical symptoms. In that work, affect was initially understood as a quantitative ‘sum of excitation’ (Freud 1981a, 153) that had no outlet and consequently led to hysteria. Freud discovered that when his patients talked to him about traumatic events whose repression had led to hysteria that excess quantity of ‘affect’ (as he called it) was allowed to be discharged, to leave the body.

The Project for a Scientific Psychology

One of Freud’s most important theorisations of affect (following on from his earliest in Studies on Hysteria [1893–1895]) can be found in the Project for a Scientific Psychology (1981a) [1895] (henceforth the Project). It laid the ground for his understanding of the term. Freud attempted to describe the very functioning of the brain, to be more precise cognition and perception.¹ After all, affect occupies a central position in the Project.

Early in this text, Freud defines the general nature of the nervous system as that of responding to and having to discharge stimuli from the outside and inside. It has two main functions: ‘the reception of stimuli from outside and the discharge of excitations of endogenous origin […]’ (303, italics in the original). The quantities of either external or internal energies ‘impinge on sensory neurons’ (Schore 1997, 810) and need to be discharged. Freud was implicitly – and over the course of his text more explicitly – referring to affect here, as has been pointed out by some scholars (Schore 1997; Green 1999): ‘Affect is brought about by a sudden discharge of previously stored excitation’ (Schore 1997, 810). Stimuli from the outside are discharged by the neuronic system in so far as it ‘employs ...