| Rivista | La Rivista di Psicoanalisi |
| Fascicolo | The Italian Psychoanalytic Annual 2025/19 |
| Titolo | Continuity and change: The effects of technological transformations on clinical practice with adolescents |
| Autori | Roberta Di Nardo, Stefano Monetti |
| Editore | Raffaello Cortina Editore |
| Formato |
 Articolo |
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| Pagine | |
| Lingua | inglese |
| Online da | 10-2026 |
The widespread use of new technologies has profoundly transformed the way in which adolescents live and represent their own experience. In this paper, we seek to outline two complementary perspectives. On the one hand, there exists a continuity in the ways in which they symbolise their experiences: even through new media – social media, blogs, TV series and manga – adolescents seek to construct narratives of themselves similar to those they once entrusted, for example, to a diary. On the other hand, there is a clear shift in the nature of consumption and thought: the speed, fragmentation and proliferation of digital stimuli foster a more immediate and less reflective experience, linked to excitement rather than elaboration. This new way of relating to reality lies at the root of the new psychopathological forms increasingly encountered in adolescent psychoanalytic practice. The clinical vignettes presented illustrate the ways in which the relationship with the smartphone or with the language of manga may become both a defence against anxiety and thought, as well as an opportunity for symbolic transformation. The analysis of these experiences, also in light of Bollas’s concepts of extractive introjection and refractive thinking, shows the extent to which psychoanalysis may offer a horizon of meaning, alongside tools for understanding and treating emerging forms of adolescent distress.
KEY WORDS: Narcissism, adolescents, new technologies, dysregulation disorders, recognition.
