The Age of Perversion: Desire and Technology in Psychoanalysis and Culture

303 Pages·2016·20.44 MB·English

by  Danielle Knafo

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“The Age of Perversion is a riveting (pun intended!) existential p sychodynamic
account of perversion in the twenty-first century. Building on Freud’s p ioneering
insights – fortified by wide-ranging interdisciplinary scholarship, clinical case
studies, and empirical inquiry – Knafo and Lo Bosco explain how perversity,
for better and worse, is the inevitable manifestation of s elf-conscious human
animals protesting their corporeality and finitude: desperately striving to
maintain a sense of meaning and value in a sexually saturated, n arcissistically
inflated, commercially inundated, technologically permeated, rapidly c hanging
cultural milieu. Playful, profound, and provocative; a must read.”
– Sheldon Solomon, author, The Worm at the Core:
On the Role of Death in Life
“Knafo and Lo Bosco have written a veritable atlas of human perversion,
which includes, among its delights and surprises, the perverse practices of the
NSA, the APA, and the Vatican. Knafo, a renowned analyst, takes us into
her consulting room where she works with men who marry dolls and women
desperate to look like dolls, while Lo Bosco illuminates the perversity of vari-
ous corporate practices. The authors leave the reader thinking differently not
only about sexual acts but also about the perverse strategies we all use to
violate boundaries, toy with the forbidden, and deny death. This disturbing
and remarkable book makes it clear that the very way we define our humanity
is changing before our eyes.”
– Deborah Anna Luepnitz, Ph.D., author, Schopenhauer’s
Porcupines: Intimacy and Its Dilemmas
“Through their exquisite clinical/sociocultural observations, Knafo and Lo
Bosco render virtual, robotic relations frighteningly sensible. With depth and
breadth, they broaden the gender spectrum to include dolls, robots, gynoids,
and androids. They describe perverse forms of relating as psychogenetically
adaptive, salvation-seeking efforts, while warning that the capacity to damage
social life is profound. The authors also make important connections between
techno-perversion and trafficking, genocidal atrocities, and black markets for
organs, guns, and drugs. If there is a redemptive quality to this disturbing,
dark subject, it is the authors’ ability to find meaning and method in these
dangerous acts. They have crafted an insightful, disturbingly relevant book
that all clinicians should read.”
– Andrea Celenza, Ph.D., author, Erotic Revelations:
Clinical Applications and Perverse Scenarios
“Danielle Knafo and Rocco Lo Bosco have produced a book that is equally
frightening and enlightening. By considering the boundary between the human
and the machine, they touch on issues in the philosophy of science, ethics, soci-
ology, and social psychology, as well as clinical psychoanalysis. Their synthesis
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of these fields and their combination of depth and breadth make theirs a book
well worth reading. In a unique combination of daring, scholarship, and com-
passion, the authors enter the world of a future where the line between the
human and the machine is blurred so badly, it is merely a smudge on the hori-
zon. While considering the difference between love and perversion they give
the reader a sense of how technology provides a substitute for human love that
can satisfy some men more than interaction with another person could do. In
her case studies, Dr. Knafo dares to raise the question of whether we should
regard this as pathology or as the best some people can do in finding satisfac-
tion in their otherwise isolated and lonely lives.”
– Arlene Kramer Richards, author, A Fresh Look at Perversions
“The Age of Perversion courageously explores the impact of technology on
human life – sex dolls, electronic devices, robots, the Internet, and more.
Based both on broad research and in-depth clinical investigation, the book
has several merits. It acquaints the reader with an astonishing range of per-
versions that have only become possible through new technologies. It explores
the social side of perversion and examines how perversion has entered main-
stream culture. Finally, it shows how psychoanalytic theory helps us under-
stand the seemingly weird and unintelligible in human and humane terms.”
– Carlo Strenger, Ph.D., author, The Fear of Insignificance:
Searching for Meaning in the Twenty-First Century and
Freud’s Legacy in the Global Era
From the preface: “This book examines how our ever-increasing access to
technology is profoundly altering our lives, endowing inanimate objects with
social and sexual cachet, and stretching the boundaries of our normal frames
of reference.”
– David Levy, AI expert, roboticist, and author,
Love and Sex with Robots
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The Age of Perversion
We have entered the age of perversion, an era in which we are becom-
ing more like machines and they more like us. The Age of Perversion
explores the sea changes occurring in sexual and social life, made pos-
sible by the ongoing technological revolution, and demonstrates how
psychoanalysts can understand and work with manifestations of per-
version in clinical settings.
Until now theories of perversion have limited their scope of inquiry
to sexual behavior and personal trauma. The authors of this book
widen that inquiry to include the social and political sphere, trac-
ing perversion’s existential roots to the human experience of being a
conscious animal troubled by the knowledge of death. Offering both
creative and destructive possibilities, perversion challenges boundaries
and norms in every area of life and involves transgression, illusion
casting, objectification, dehumanization, and the radical quest for
transcendence.
This volume presents several clinical cases, including a man who
lived with and loved a sex doll, a woman who wanted to be a Barbie
doll, and an Internet sex addict. Also examined are cases of wide-
spread social perversion in corporations, the mental health care indus-
try, and even the government. In considering the continued impact of
technology, the authors discuss how it is changing the practice of psy-
chotherapy. They speculate about what the future may hold for a spe-
cies who will redefine what it means to be human more in the next few
decades than during any other time in human history.
The Age of Perversion provides a novel examination of the conver-
gence of perversion and technology that will appeal to psychoanalysts
and psychoanalytic psychotherapists, social workers, mental health
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counselors, sex therapists, sexologists, roboticists, and futurists, as well
as social theorists and students and scholars of cultural studies.
Danielle Knafo is a professor in the clinical psychology doctoral pro-
gram at Long Island University and a faculty member and supervisor
in New York University’s postdoctoral program in psychotherapy and
psychoanalysis. She has lectured internationally and published exten-
sively, including Dancing with the Unconscious (2012) with Routledge.
She maintains a private practice in New York.
Rocco Lo Bosco is a teacher and writer who has published nonfiction,
poetry, short stories, and two novels – Buddha Wept (2003) and Ninety
Nine (2015). He edits articles on psychoanalysis, science, and the
philosophy of science.
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Psychoanalysis in a New Key Book Series

Donnel Stern
Series Editor
When music is played in a new key, the melody does not change, but
the notes that make up the composition do: change in the context of
continuity, continuity that perseveres through change. Psychoanalysis
in a New Key publishes books that share the aims psychoanalysts
have always had, but that approach them differently. The books in the
series are not expected to advance any particular theoretical agenda,
although to this date most have been written by analysts from the
Interpersonal and Relational orientations.
The most important contribution of a psychoanalytic book is the
communication of something that nudges the reader’s grasp of clinical
theory and practice in an unexpected direction. Psychoanalysis in a
New Key creates a deliberate focus on innovative and unsettling clini-
cal thinking. Because that kind of thinking is encouraged by explo-
ration of the sometimes surprising contributions to psychoanalysis
of ideas and findings from other fields, Psychoanalysis in a New Key
particularly encourages interdisciplinary studies. Books in the series
have married psychoanalysis with dissociation, trauma theory, sociol-
ogy, and criminology. The series is open to the consideration of stud-
ies examining the relationship between psychoanalysis and any other
field – for instance, biology, literary and art criticism, philosophy, sys-
tems theory, anthropology, and political theory.
But innovation also takes place within the boundaries of psychoa-
nalysis, and Psychoanalysis in a New Key therefore also presents work
that reformulates thought and practice without leaving the precincts
of the field. Books in the series focus, for example, on the significance
of personal values in psychoanalytic practice, on the complex inter-
relationship between the analyst’s clinical work and personal life, on
vi
the consequences for the clinical situation when patient and analyst are
from different cultures, and on the need for psychoanalysts to accept
the degree to which they knowingly satisfy their own wishes during
treatment hours, often to the patient’s detriment.
For a full list of all the titles in the Psychoanalysis in a New Key
series, please visit the Routledge website.
RECENT TITLES IN THIS SERIES:
Vol. 32 The Age of Perversion: Desire and Technology in Psychoanalysis
and Culture Danielle Knafo and Rocco Lo Bosco
Vol. 31 Unknowable, Unspeakable and Unsprung:  Psychoanalytic
Perspectives on Truth, Scandal, Secrets and Lies Edited by Jean Petrucelli
and Sarah Schoen
Vol. 30 Trauma and Countertrauma, Resilience and Counterresilience:
Insights from Psychoanalysts and Trauma Experts Edited by Richard
B. Gartner
Vol. 29 The Purloined Self: Interpersonal Perspectives in Psychoanalysis
Edgar A. Levenson
Vol. 28 On the Lyricism of the Mind: Psychoanalysis and Literature
Dana Amir
Vol. 27 Entering Night Country: Psychoanalytic Reflections on Loss and
Resilience Stephanie Brody
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The Age of Perversion

Desire and Technology in Psychoanalysis
and Culture
Danielle Knafo and Rocco Lo Bosco
viii
First published 2017
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2017 Danielle Knafo and Rocco Lo Bosco
The right of Danielle Knafo and Rocco Lo Bosco to be identified as authors of
this work has been asserted by them in accordance with sections 77 and 78
of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised
in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter
invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or
retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered
trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent
to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication Data
Names: Knafo, Danielle, author. | LoBosco, Rocco, author.
Title: The age of perversion: desire and technology in psychoanalysis
and culture / Danielle Knafo and Rocco Lo Bosco.
Description: New York: Routledge, [2017] |
Series: Psychoanalysis in a new key; 32 |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016027947| ISBN 9781138849204 (hardback: paper) |
ISBN 9781138849211 (pbk.: paper) | ISBN 9781315723877 (e-book)
Subjects: LCSH: Psychoanalysis. | Information technology – Social aspects. |
Manners and customs. | Sex (Psychology)
Classification: LCC BF173. K534 2017 | DDC 150.19/5–dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016027947
ISBN: 978- 1- 138- 84920- 4 (hbk)
ISBN: 978- 1- 138- 84921- 1 (pbk)
ISBN: 978- 1- 315- 72387- 7 (ebk)
Typeset in Times New Roman
by Out of House Publishing
ix
This book is dedicated to

Rosine Knafo,
Gavriel Knafo,
and
Diana Pepe