Seduction, deception and technology

This paper proposes that exploring the use of internet pornography creates a potentially beneficial, albeit defensive liminal space that can be used therapeutically. The content of compelling sexual scenes can be viewed as the psyche's way of mastering internal trauma and masking an inner emptiness. However, from a Jungian perspective, the use of internet pornography can also be seen as a patient's distorted way of trying to make dissociated affects more bearable by triumphing over them. The sexual use of technology can express intrapsychic conflict encapsulated in what Stoller called 'microdots'. Stoller's microdots are unique scripts - a kind of emotional code that gives clinicians an opportunity to reveal unconscious processes and transcend them through meaning making. Wood's work at the Portman Clinic on the chosen 'compelling scenarios' of pornography-addicted patients is also examined with this Jungian lens. Jung's idea of the transcendent function is used to show the value of holding the tension of fantasy and frustration provoked by intimacy. The paper illustrates how they come together within the therapeutic relationship to stimulate something new.