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Abstract
Patients often come to treatment with difficulties in creating and forming romantic relationships. As therapists, we accompany them in this delicate and sometimes fraught process. Many patients turn to dating apps (e.g., “Tinder,” “OkCupid”) in order to try and find something truly meaningful to fulfill their lives. These platforms occupy their everyday lives, consuming their time and mental energy. The present article suggests that observing some of the unique qualities of interactions that take place in dating apps may provide a lens that reflects, emphasizes, and teaches us about human struggles of intersubjectivity, complexity, and sense of agency, which are at the core of psychoanalytic interest. Clinical examples illustrate these psychic aspects, as well as the way they may be processed in the therapeutic encounter.
Acknowledgments
This paper was presented at the IARPP Conference, June 2019, Tel Aviv, Israel. My deepest gratitude to Jonathan Slavin, PhD. for his devoted guidance and mentorship, and his invaluable contribution to this work.
Notes
1 It is important to note that recently, particularly during the pandemic (COVID-19), many therapeutic encounters have been taking place in online virtual platforms where—despite the digital “interruptions”—live, constant, and developing therapeutic interactions can exist.
2 The term “Catfishing” refers to a person who creates a deceptive social media profile on purpose and attempts to create romantic connections using this fake persona (D’Costa, Citation2014).
3 “Fantasying” is intentionally spelled in accordance with Winnicott’s original spelling (Citation1971).
4 This conceptualization of fantasying approaches a similar understanding of mental process described in Irene Fast’s discussion of Event Theory (Citation1985), an early phase of psychological experiencing prior to processes of developmental differentiation, corresponding to early stages of object-object relationship as discussed by Benjamin (Citation1995).
5 In the Israeli cultural context, this would not yet be understood as an outrageous statement. It represents a concretized stereotype for an ideal, which may not recognize how much it limits, flattens, and delegitimizes nuance, variety, and personal choice. Narr’s Citation2021 recent work exposes more fully the way the algorithms underlying the infrastructure of dating apps act to promote unconscious bias and racism.
6 Thanks to Miki Rahmani-Yerushalmi, M.A., for discussing this aspect of dating apps with me.
7 “For Winnicott, as opposed to imagining and dreaming which enriches contact with the world, both fantasying and daydreaming are associated with dissociation, a means of escaping the pains and frustrations of reality (Citation1971).
8 “Omnipotent closed relational loop” is my terminology for describing the situation in which communication between individuals takes place, but may not deepen into a dynamic intersubjective encounter, in which mutual recognition can occur (Benjamin, Citation1995). In this situation, movement, creativity, and transformation are limited, and the interaction keeps collapsing into a dominance of internal representations of the other.
9 This term is adapted from Slavin and Rahmani following their usage of the concept of a person’s “sexual fingerprint” (2016, p.152).
10 The question regarding the army mentioned by patient “Dana” reflects a cultural norm in Israel, where army service is an important developmental milestone.
11 Of course, it is probable that there are many individuals who use dating apps in a way that feels (and is) experimental, lively, and productive for their lives, notwithstanding any reductive pull that may be inherent in the nature of this modality. In my practice, I see patients for whom the whole process of entering relationships is often fraught. Thus, in this article, I focus on those individuals for whom the use of dating apps is a source and manifestation of their distress and difficulty.
12 I originally used the phrase “caught me with my pants down” in the text without awareness to my parallel processes with Tom, such as feeling exposed with nothing to show and give. Interestingly, this came to my mind after reviewing the first draft of this paper.
13 “Ghosting” is a popular term for the described disappearances in dating apps.
14 And in classic psychoanalytic fashion, displaced upwards to his bald head, and of course more metaphorically and emotionally, his exposed and inadequate self.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Maya Asher
Maya Asher recieved her Ph.D. in clinical psychology at the University of Haifa in 2019, and is currently in independent practice in Tel Aviv, Israel. Previous published papers focused on empirical research on interpersonal processes in social anxiety, as well as on social anxiety and gender.