Media and Psychoanalysis

'At last, the book we have been waiting for – that comprehensive text that bites off as much as it can chew from our ragingly complex contemporary media and technology landscape, and then subjects what it finds to the psychoanalytic gaze. From AI to Žižek, the authors have tamed a dizzyingly diverse body of theory into a brilliant, comprehensive, and significant text. Johanssen and Krüger have crushed it.' -- Dr Aaron Balick, psychotherapist and author of The Psychodynamics of Social Networking 'This book is a tour de force. It takes us from early feminist psychoanalytic work on the media through the decades of TV and video games to the utter ubiquitous character of social media in the present of a neoliberalism that invades every corner of life. Its analysis is utterly compelling: at the same time erudite and accessible. I cannot recommend it highly enough to both scholars in the field and to students alike.' -- Valerie Walkerdine, Distinguished Research Professor, Cardiff University 'Media and Psychoanalysis: A Critical Introduction is a major contribution to the field of media studies. It presents a very well-researched and accessible study of human engagement with contemporary media through the lens of psychoanalysis. … the authors explore how different media incite and organise our desire for recognition and forms of relating that involve a complex balance between activity and passivity, fantasy play and reality testing. They offer radically new ways to understand the social and political implications – positive and negative – arising from our interactions with these diverse forms.' -- Professor Emeritus Elizabeth Cowie, Film Studies, University of Kent