Net losses – porn screens and teen dreams

Every year, Severnside Psychotherapy, Bristol’s leading psychoanalytic psychotherapy training organisation, hosts an annual lecture, inviting a contemporary thinker in the world of psychoanalysis to come and speak in Bristol. This year, Professor Alessandra Lemma will speak about the impact of internet pornography on the development of adolescent sexuality. Morwenna Lewis caught up with her to find out bit more about this challenging topic.

So Alessandra, from a psychoanalyst’s perspective, what would you say is the main impact of internet pornography on our teenagers?

I would say there are three effects. Firstly, some children no longer have a break from sensual stimulation, traditionally considered to occur during the ‘latency’ period from around 5 to 12 years old; children now can have access to stimulatory material from a very early age before they have the emotional and cognitive capacity to make sense of it or make informed choices about it. Secondly, technology can undermine children developing a secure sense of self that is rooted in the body. Virtual experiences may make it hard for young people to truly integrate the reality of their sexual body into their identity. Thirdly, the internet supplies ready made sexual scenarios. This means that the young person doesn’t always own their own fantasies, which may undermine their efforts to establish a stable sexual identity.

Can you talk a little about the importance of delay in terms of desire and sexual satisfaction?

When I was growing up, I often experienced desire, followed by delay, followed sometimes by delivery of the thing I wanted. Instant internet access has removed the delay stage. Without delay or frustration, there is no time for the experience of desire to grow in the mind. If we don’t face the possibility of not getting what we think we want, we cannot find out why we want it, or even if is what we want. We don’t learn about the nature of our desire, there is no space for reflection.

So, when we don’t have to wait, we are missing out on an important process?

Yes, this is called ‘representation’, and is a mind-based process. When there is a delay, our body pauses between action and reaction. This allows what is happening in the body to gain meaning in the mind. If we never have to wait, it is as if the reality of the body has been made irrelevant.

How can psychotherapy help teenagers who find themselves compulsively viewing pornography online?

It can give them a space to look inside at the psychic content they may be avoiding through spending time lost in the internet. It gives them a chance to explore what is and isn’t their own sexual identity. It can help deal with the shame that often accompanies their online activity or their sexual preferences.

Do you have any advice for parents who are concerned about their children’s online activity?

Helping your child make sense of their sexual urges and sexuality is one of the most challenging areas of parenting. Offering a non- shaming and understanding approach is the best response, which can be easier said than done.

Alessandra’s lecture is called Intimacy, the Internet and Sexual Development: From 3D(esire) to 2D(esire) and will take place at the Watershed, central Bristol, on Saturday 25th November at 10.30 am.

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 andFamilies and has published extensively on psychoanalysis, the body and trauma.