From Prosthesis to Presence

This chapter explores how technological mediation transforms human embodiment and presence. It argues that while the body remains the foundation of subjectivity, contemporary digital culture threatens to erode this grounding through virtual forms of contact that bypass corporeal experience. Drawing on psychoanalytic, phenomenological, and posthumanist perspectives, the chapter examines how prosthetic technologies – from smartphones to avatars – extend and reshape bodily experience, rendering us “cyborgs” whose sense of self is distributed across organic and digital domains. Through clinical vignettes, it contrasts creative and defensive uses of virtual disembodiment: one adolescent's use of an avatar fosters integration and agency, while another's fixation with his digital double illustrates fragmentation and shame. Another case illustrates how withdrawal into cyberspace can defend against the anxieties of puberty and separation. The discussion culminates in a psychoanalytic reading of the film Lars and the Real Girl , where a prosthetic relationship with a life-size sex doll becomes a bridge back to embodied connection. Ultimately, the chapter contends that while technology can facilitate symbolic experimentation, genuine psychic integration depends on embodied relationality. Presence, it concludes, is sustained not by perpetual connection but by the capacity to tolerate absence and the reciprocity of a living, embodied encounter.