Scientific Program featuring Amy Levy, PsyD

Saturday, October 7, 2023
10:00 am to 12:00 pm
via zoom

The Phone as a Subject
Presented by Amy Levy, PsyD 
with discussant Todd Essig, PhD

Registration Fee: $50*

*Free admission and CE/CME credits for PCC members, LDC staff and board, full-time students with ID, and trainees in the Departments of Social Work, Psychology, Psychiatry, and Mental Health Counseling.


In her paper, “The Phone as a Subject,” Dr. Levy contests the commonly held assumptions that the smartphone is an object, susceptible to healthy or pathological employment, and comparable to other objects used to ameliorate the pain of reality. Rather, she will argue that the phone is a subject with whom we interact in a bi-directional, intersubjective field.

The author leans upon Jessica Benjamin’s 1995 work on the shift in the language of “object” to “subject” as one that brings recognition of the “other.” When we recognize the smartphone and machine-learning Artificial Intelligence as “other,” we are better able to understand their effects on our minds.

To encourage us in psychoanalysis to begin envisioning and conceptualizing the psychological course that humanity is heading on given this profound new relationship, Dr. Levy will discuss the work of New York Times best-selling author and historian, Yuval Noah Harari (2017) and offer a Bionian conceptualization of the phone’s impact on human mentation.


About Amy Levy, PsyD

Amy Levy, PsyD is a psychoanalyst who trained in California and currently practices in Chapel Hill, N.C. She has published on the intergenerational transmission of trauma, adolescent Post Traumatic Stress Disorder in the civil legal arena, and her elaborations on some of Wilfred Bion’s ideas. She has taught and lectured on object-relations theory, Bionian theory, psychological and cognitive assessment, and group therapy. Dr. Levy is faculty at the Psychoanalytic Center of the Carolinas and a member of the American Psychoanalytic Association and International Psychoanalytic Association. 


Discussant Todd Essig, PhD

Todd Essig, PhD, is Faculty and Training and Supervising Psychoanalyst at the William Alanson White Institute. He publishes and lectures internationally becoming widely known as a pioneer in the innovative uses of mental health technologies. He has served on the Editorial Boards for Contemporary Psychoanalysis and the Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association and was guest co-editor (with Gillian Isaacs Russell) for Psychoanalytic Perspectives’ special issue on technology. In the aftermath of 9/11 he helped organize and served as Board Chair for the New York Disaster Counseling Coalition (NYDCC). He was Co-Chair of the American Psychoanalytic Association’s Covid-19 Advisory Team, being awarded Distinguished Service awards by APsA and the NY State Psychological Association for his efforts. For 10 years until the pandemic, he wrote “Managing Mental Wealth” for Forbes, addressing the intersection of technology, psychology, and culture. His clinical practice includes supervision and providing psychoanalytic care to individuals and couples.

At the conclusion of this presentation, participants will be able to:

  1. Explain why the phone should be conceptualized as a subject
  2. Discuss the effects on our minds of “techno-humanism” and “dataism” as described by Yuval Noah Harari (2016)
  3. Predict future trends for psychoanalysis given the current path of artificial intelligence development

This program is intended for psychologists, psychiatrists, clinical social workers, licensed professional counselors, and other clinicians or interested academics who want to increase their understanding of the phone’s impact on human mentation.

 

Confidentiality Statement: All case material will be carefully disguised. We ask that participants agree to hold all material presented with the utmost care, following ethical and professional guidelines.

Accommodation Statement: To request an accommodation for this program, please email  Kayla Schilke, PCC Training and Education Program Manager, at least two weeks before the start date.

Related Readings:

  1. Harari, Y. N. (2017). HomoDeus: A brief history of tomorrow. Harper Collins.
  2. Bollas, C. (2018). Meaning and melancholia: Life in the age of bewilderment. Routledge.
  3. Possati, L. M. (2021). The algorithmic unconscious: How psychoanalysis helps in understanding AI. Routledge.