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The Rise of Oedipus Tech: Life in the Shadow of the Digital Object, presented by Dustin Kahoud, PsyD
March 5 @ 7:30 pm - 9:00 pm
This article is an inquiry into the role of smartphones in shifting the dynamics of human relationships as we have traditionally known them. I reimagine the Oedipus Complex to account for the company we keep in the digital age – the smartphones that have become ubiquitous inhabitants of our interpersonal world. Specifically, I focus on triangular relational configurations that now include smart devices as the new “third,” the ever-present “digital objects” that serve as points at which two human beings meet. After providing two clinical illustrations, I conclude that we are increasingly headed toward an interpersonal age of digital objects that will serve to artificially connect people more than ever, and simultaneously distance people in terms of in-person human connection. I am proposing that these relational dynamics will ultimately serve to loosen the primal, instinctual affective ties that have served to bind human beings together since the beginning of time.