Intimacy, the Internet and Sexual Development: From 3D(esire) to 2D(esire)
The impact of the internet on adolescents

Professor Alessandra Lemma

Technology has a broad reach across many functions of the human mind and we are in the process of understanding how new advances impact our brains.

In this lecture Psychoanalyst Alessandra Lemma will focus on how the Internet is changing our relationship to desire and sexual development during adolescence. The electronic dimension appears to have led to a transfiguration of intimacy, of sexual identity and most importantly, it will be argued, it fundamentally interferes with the ‘work of desire’.

This lecture broadens the psychoanalytic world’s commentary on how technological developments are influencing society; from its current focus on the impact of technology on the practice of psychoanalysis to an investigation of its impact on the realm of psychic development.

Professor Alessandra Lemma: Biography

Professor Alessandra Lemma is a Fellow of the British Psychoanalytical Society and Visiting Professor, Psychoanalysis Unit, University College London where she is also the Clinical Director of the Psychological Interventions Research Centre. She is a Consultant Clinical Psychologist at the Anna Freud National centre for Children and Families. She is Visiting Professor, Istituto Winnicott, Sapienza University of Rome and “Centro Winnicot”, Rome. She is the Editor of the New Library of Psychoanalysis book series (Routledge) and one of the regional Editors for the International Journal of Psychoanalysis. She has published extensively on psychoanalysis, the body and trauma.