The aim of the project was to find out to what extent psychoanalytic research approaches can contribute to interdisciplinary digitization research. The underlying question was whether and how the everyday use of social media and the internet influences the constitution of subjectivity and intersubjectivity. At the beginning, a deep hermeneutic pilot study examined the subjective experience of internet-mediated contacts and relationship experiences using Facebook as an example. The pilot study was evaluated with the participation of students who were able to learn the method of deep hermeneutic interpretation of research interviews and apply it in their master's theses. Since the project was completed, the approach has been continued in three doctoral theses (on the significance of smartphones in child and adolescent psychotherapy, on the dating app Tinder, and on video blogs). In addition to the qualitative deep hermeneutic approach, the project also included a critical examination of concepts suitable for psychoanalytic research on digitalization.
It was shown that psychoanalytic research approaches are suitable for investigating whether unconscious processes of subject formation change in digitalized culture. Psychoanalysis has various approaches to thinking and research (clinical, social-psychological, cultural-theoretical), each with its own advantages and disadvantages. For interdisciplinary dialogue, it is particularly important that psychoanalysts clarify their specific subject matter and the possibilities and limitations of their method. In order to specify the psychoanalytic concept of the subject, the Oedipus complex and the transitional space were developed as central criteria for describing changes, with a particular focus on dealing with absence.
Original language: German