“ATTACHNET”

When asked “If you could bring something extinct back to life, what would you choose?”, the twenty-nine-year-old actor Simon Bird replied: “My pre-internet concentration span”.

Defining myself as an “immigrant” (someone who was born pre-internet), what I found encouraging about Bird’s reply was not so much that he had a wish to go back to an earlier time rather that it came from someone whose age firmly puts him in the category of a “digital native” (someone who grew up with the internet). Immigrant or native, I do not know about you, but nearly twenty years after the initial excitement of the boom brought by the world-wide-web, which has been hailed as the most revolutionary and life-transforming invention humans have ever developed, I find myself increasingly living my life via a screen. As I look through the windows of my front room, I see my neighbour walking her dog while scrolling intensively on her iPhone, I then catch myself yearning for the days when people in my street used to stroll up the road making eye contact and greeting each other pleasantly without the constant urge to bury their heads in their smartphones.

The internet has revolutionised our life beyond measure and so by way of looking at the literature about this rapidly developing new world, it is not my intention to suggest any definitive conclusions, but I would like us to pause for a moment, come away from the screen, and examine the various implications of how our new screen-based lifestyle has affected our relational landscape. In doing so, I have found two divergent debates about the influence of the internet on our lives. In her book Alone Together, Sherry Turkle (2011) argues that our increasing exposure to robotic and other computer-related objects is drawing us into experiencing relational attention that is disturbing in its intensity of focus on mechanical objects, which is pulling us away from the physical world. Similarly, the writer Nicholas Carr (2011) writes in his book The Shallows:

Media aren't just channels of information but they also shape processes of thought. What the Net seems to be doing is chipping away my capacity for concentration and contemplation. Whether I’m online or not, my mind now expects to take in information the way the Net distributes it; in a swiftly moving stream of particles. Once I was a scuba diver in the sea of words. Now I zip along a surface, like a guy on a jet ski. (Carr, 2011, p. 121)

Cathy Davidson (2011) on the other hand writes in her book Now You See It that the widespread shifts taking place through the increasingly pervasive use of digital technologies are helping us to notice elements of our cognitive dissonance. Technology will change our thinking to allow a more connected and collaborative future that we were previously blinded to and may be leading us to deeper and broader rationality. Take YouTube for example, where one can freely perform to an audience that may or may not be there. At the same time, the anonymity, aided by physical distance provides us with the ability to attend, to watch closely, be drawn into a virtual world and all at no cost. In Davidson’s view, this gives rise to a new pinnacle in human democracy and freedom of expression that can be enormously attractive, creative, and give life-affirming movements the ability to achieve immense social change that could never have been accomplished before. What is more; all at the press of a button!

As a storytelling mechanism, the internet has transformed our way of being; now, each one of us can think and write our thoughts and experiences and self- publish without fear of being censored or controlled. Learning to tell and share our stories and experiences through digital distribution has opened up endless possibilities, sprawling communications and global opportunities that will soon reach almost every human being. These are low friction opportunities that can help discover, create, enhance, and change the world we are living in. People in remote countries such as Mongolia can now afford to study English online, saving on the otherwise impossible fees of travelling to England and an English person can now learn to mimic the cooking techniques of a master chef in Finland.

Davidson (2011) claims that through these devices, we multi-task and develop more diverse relationships as one way to deeper and truer knowing. The internet has provided us with this global mirroring where, for example, a girl like Malala Yousafzai living in an oppressive society is now able to access information that she would otherwise never have been permitted to due to her gender. We saw similar empowerment happening with the exposure of the prolific paedophile Jimmy Savile, as well as all the other recent exposures of child sex abuse and other crimes against humanity. With Facebook, Twitter, Google, and other digital giant corporations acting as legitimate vehicles for whistle-blowing, we now have fewer secrets and have become much more aware of the world we are surrounded by; a world of free expression that gives scope and freedom for the individual to express and share ideas, photos and experiences. From an “immigrant” standpoint such empowerment has indeed exceeded the realms of our imagination.

Yet as Turkle (2012) poignantly asks, “by creating this fantastical virtual social life what are the benefits of extending our zone of intimacy?” We are increasingly entrusting our lives to computers where face-to-face interactions become minimal and our physical life may soon become a diluted and impoverished experience.

Recent research carried out by Ipsos Mori (2014) on “Screen time”, showed that a growing number of people spent a great amount of their free time staring at a screen and feeling unhappy about the amount of time they were spending online and craved a simpler and slower lifestyle. Conducting many observational studies herself, Turkle (2011) observed how young children bonded with robots that had been programmed with human emotions in a way they would not do with other toys. Such relationships became tremendously significant for the child and when the toy was broken or disposed of, the child would become extremely upset. Turkle (2012) found herself deeply disturbed by the manner in which people expected more from technology and less from each other. We are moving away from the deep connection that finds human relationality and in the process, we end up hiding from each other. We lose the capacity to have a conversation, eye contact, or touch, and have trouble with our capacity to self-reflect and self- soothe. We get to “edit and delete” the touch, the face, and the body language, all of which are fundamental relational tools for achieving true intimacy. In this fast-expanding social isolation, we painfully become together but alone.

From internet pornography to merely surfing the web, we are rapidly finding ourselves moving away from the physical world. This awkward relationship with ourselves has been beautifully portrayed in the semi-futuristic film Her (Jones, 2013), where we see how the protagonist’s narcissistic tendencies have been facilitated by the automatised environment in which the beloved computer asks for nothing and gives everything instantly. It is so responsive and compliant with the protagonist’s wishes that it becomes nothing but an extension of his self.

Turkle (2012) goes on to say about how social media is actually a defence against intimacy where we have created three illusions of companionship without the usual demands of the relationship:

1. Put our attention wherever we want to be.

2. Always be heard.

3. Never have to be alone.

In our pursuit of happiness, the grandmasters of Silicon Valley have genuinely thought that by inventing social media, they have finally come up with a cure for loneliness: a spare part to fix our sense of alienation. Turkle (2011) goes on to ask: does a 100-word text message really make a conversation? My next-door neighbour, a retired man in his late seventies told me: “I used to take a weekly walk to my bank, go to the library, shops, had the annual excitement of paying a visit to my travel agent who sadly had to close down. Now I’m lucky if I get to see my GP since even he has started to offer online visits.” By reducing the number of face to face interactions, hiding behind instantly gratifying toneless messages we have created an “avoidance heaven” that relentlessly connects us to many of our unmet needs, desperately filling every available gap and every empty moment in our day but in actual fact, it has presented us with a greater sense of isolation.

In his pivotal paper on the ability to tolerate one’s own company Winnicott, (1958) wrote: “. . . the capacity to be alone is based on the experience of being alone in the presence of someone, and that without a sufficiency of this experience the capacity to be alone cannot develop” (p. 33). The capacity to be alone is an internalisation of the presence of the “good enough” caregiver who is reliable and constant. By the same token Bowlby, in his volume on separation, wrote about the impact of separation anxiety on the maturation process: “Young children are upset by even brief separation, older children are upset by longer ones. Adults are upset whenever a separation is prolonged or permanent, as in bereavement” (Bowlby, 1973, p. 50).

Both men saw how the internalisation of a good enough relationship in our childhood engenders in the securely attached child the capacity to tolerate anxiety, knowing that the caregiver has gone but will be back soon. As the child grows he or she develops the necessary tolerance of frustration to be able to do nothing, to stay with the discomfort of that void, the emptiness, and the “not knowing”. In this authentic state, Winnicott wrote: “When alone in the sense I am using the term and only when alone, the infant is able to do the equivalent of what in an adult would be called relaxing” (Winnicott, 1958, p. 34).

When our early attachment is disrupted and affected by frequent separation and loss, our sense of insecurity and anxiety levels will increase. This often leads to other forms of what Bowlby termed as “defensive exclusions” and Allan Schore called “affect dysregulation” in later life. We see this particularly in addictive behaviour where, by taking the substance, the person with an addiction will try to master control over his anxieties, the pain of loss, the dread of separateness, and his general incapacity of being alone.

As therapists, the internet has also presented us with new options to work with our clients such as using Skype or Face Time for therapy and supervision sessions. I now get referrals from abroad from countries where psychotherapy services are very limited. I can see the benefits and temptations of these new opportunities, how such interactions can appear to be very helpful to someone in a deprived area and who would otherwise never have any other direct access to therapy. As attachment-based psychotherapists, however, one of the goals of working with insecurely attached clients is to model to them the concept and experience of intimacy, what Lyons-Ruth, (1999) termed as implicit relational knowing. To know and be known “These self and interactive processes generate patterns that the infant comes to recognize, remember and expect” (Beebe & Lachmann, 2014, p. 7). We now know that it takes a baby and his primary attachment figure at least two years to form a secure bond. The same applies to adults: relationships take time.

Now is the time to consider what the long term relational and ethical implications of offering our services over the internet are likely to be. Can we truly provide effective therapy online and what about our greatest servant and tool; the countertransference? Being with one another, and experiencing what Daniel Stern called “the dance” in which the “present moment”, “now moment”, and “a moment of meeting” are truly realised in the real space between therapist and client. This precious in-between space we know is often aided by transference and countertransference. In his book The Present Moment in Psychotherapy and Everyday Life, Stern (2004) described in minute detail and exactitude (which only Stern could) the nature of intersubjective communications, of being with another person and understanding who they are at a specific moment;

The basic assumption is that change is based on lived experience. In and of itself, verbally, understanding, explaining or narrating something is not sufficient to bring about change. There must be also an actual experience, a subjectively lived happening. An event must be lived with feelings and actions taking place in the real-time, in real-world with real people in a moment of presentness. (Stern, 2004, p. 13)

Being in a long term relationship generally does not come without effort or discomfort; by hiding behind a screen, can we really help the client with an avoidant, preoccupied or dissociative attachment pattern change his/her relational world or are we simply colluding with the overall illusion raised by Turkle (2012)? A relationship mediated through digital technology is still a form of relationship and on many occasions can be most helpful to our functioning life. An occasional Skype therapy session or a short and succinct e-mail exchange between sessions can feel very holding to most of our clients. My concern, however, remains with the quality of this compromised “dance” and the risk of losing that “split-second world” (Beebe & Stern, 1977, p. 37) that occurs in a moment-to-moment, face-to-face, and body-to-body interaction and creates what Stern called “vitality affects” (Stern, 2004, p. 36).

Vitality in Stern’s terminology is a gestalt that emerges from separate experiences such as movement, force, time, space, and intention. The experience of vitality can only be realised in the context of a relationship, and serves as a basis for experiencing others. Vitality affects (Stern, 1985), such as the sense of suffer- ing, fading away, sudden eruptiveness and fleetingness are concerned with how the experience is felt regardless of content. Forms of vitality are “parts of episodic memories” (Stern, 1985, p. 11) and serve as the most fundamental of all felt experiences (Stern, 1985, p. 8).

In recent years, stories of cyberbullying, revenge porn, hurtful and anonymous social interactions, relationships ending at the push of a button, total exposure, and the violation of intimacy have all been part of the narrative within my consulting room. With these relational hazards occurring effortlessly online, what feels particularly alarming is the absence of cues around sensitivity that are so hard to express through cyber communication. After all, sending an insensitive text message or confronting emotions via an e-mail feels less scary and typing a hurtful message may be easier than a face-to-face confrontation. Also, young as well as older clients have reported suffering from cyber-anxiety: where waiting for every text message is tinged with a sense of impending loss. What I find most concerning is that clients report spending longer periods of time alone while waiting for that next message. As one of my clients told me: “Before the internet, I looked forward to seeing someone, now I just look forward to hearing from them”. Another client, a divorced single mother was complaining about how her children’s relationship with their dad is on Facebook only. More disturbingly, a client who is addicted to porn justified his addiction on line as a preventative measure that stopped him actually offending against children.

Of all recent devices, my favourite one is the satnav. By showing us the way from A to B, the satnav has not only reduced the urban anxiety of getting lost but has added a much-needed quality to our ability to function. Similarly, we should aim to use the internet as a tool, a bridge that helps bring individuals together and expand the relationships in the communities that we are already consciously embedded in.

We are just at the beginning of a process where we are still infatuated with technology. In this computerised new world where we are inundated with so much information, where our smartphone becomes our technological nerve centre we are at risk of mass migration into a cyber-reality. People are increasingly snacking on information as well as on relationships. In losing ourselves in a soulless virtual life devoid of feeling; we are potentially creating an autistic generation of children who will have brilliant technical skills yet poor observational and social abilities. In this relatively new reality created by virtual abundance, we have indeed been brought together but are at constant threat of being pushed further apart. We need to be wary of automated relationships where virtually nothing will be outside the realms of our control and where virtual sensations can create an illusory world unlimited by physicality. We need to be mindful that the servant we have created can soon become our master.

The capacity to be alone is characterised by the tolerance of frustration, affect regulation, cognitive focus, and collaboration. By embracing the empty moments and staying with the discomfort it evokes in us, we can recognise our vulnerability and better understand the motives as to why we need to fill in these void periods with these illusory replacement parts. However, fundamentally our identity can be preserved by not allowing this Orwellian Golem to define our contextual framework of being.

The good news is that the internet has also educated the world about attachment theory, neuroscience, trauma, and the results of studies on empathy. People are now psychologically-aware as never before about what really makes people feel better about themselves. A paradigm shift from behavioural psychology to social and relational psychology is currently spreading like wildfire. I now see fathers carrying their babies in slings and in supermarkets I see parents talking to their children with greater attentiveness, responsiveness, and empathy rather than preaching or shouting at them. This new world of right-to-right brain communication shows that our sensitivity, our feelings, and our bodies are the only assets we inherit and no device or other illusory object-relationship could ever replace these. In the next generation, there will be enough securely attached individuals to balance the unsustainable yet gratifying relationships that social media tempt us with. In Jonathan Franzen’s words,

There is no such thing as a person whose real self you like every particle of. This is why a world of liking is ultimately a lie. But there is such a thing as a person whose real self you love every particle of. And this is why love is such an existential threat to the techno consumerist order: it exposes the lie. (Franzen, 2012, p. 9)

References

Beebe, B., & Lachmann, F. M. (2014). The Origins of Attachment. London: Routledge.

Beebe, B., & Stern, D. (1977). Engagement-disengagement and early object experiences. In: N. Freedman & S. Grand (Eds), Communicative Structure and Psychic Structure (pp. 35–55). New York: Plenum.

Bowlby, J. (1973). Attachment & Separation, Volume 2. London: Pimlico, 1998.

Carr, N. G. (2011). The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to our Brains. London: Atlantic.

Davidson, C. (2011). Now You See It. Harmondsworth: Penguin.

Descartes, R. (1637)[1998]. Discourse on Method and the Meditations. Harmondsworth: Penguin.

Franzen, J. (2012). Farther Away. London: Fourth Estate.

Jones, S. (Director) (2013). Her. Ipsos Mori (2014). Global trends 2014, navigating the new. Available at: http://www.ipsosglobaltrends.com/files/gts_2014_web.pdf (accessed 28 October 2014).

Lyons-Ruth, K. (1999). The two-person unconscious. Psychoanalytic Inquiry, 19: 576–617.

Stern, D. N. (1985). The Interpersonal World of the Infant. New York: Basic Books.

Stern, D. N. (2004). The Present Moment in Psychotherapy and Everyday Life. New York: Norton.

Turkle, S. (2011). Alone Together. New York: Basic Books

Turkle, S. (2012). Alone together. Available at: http://www.ted.com/talks/sherry_turkle_alone_together (accessed 28 October 2014).

Winnicott, D. W. (1958). The Maturation Process and the Facilitating Environment. London: Karnac, 2005.

Reproduced with permission of the publisher. See original at:

Attachment-New Directions in Psychotherapy and Relational Psychoanalysis (Vol.8/3, 2014, Karnac).

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