The Mediation of Desire

This chapter examines the psychic impact of online pornography, contrasting it with pre-digital forms. It critically reviews the empirical evidence on the prudential harms of online pornography. The difference between online and pre-digital media is not merely quantitative but structural, reshaping how sexuality is psychically elaborated. The speed, saturation, anonymity, and ubiquity of online access produce gratifications that are immediate and disembodied. Such conditions risk undermining the psychic work of phantasy, symbolisation, and the recognition of otherness, processes central to sexual development. For the digital generation, whose sexual lives emerge within these environments, the risks are significant: a diminished capacity to mentalise desire and to recognise the alterity of the other. Beyond the prudential harms to sexual health and intimacy, the concern is the erosion of psychic capacities foundational to the “work of desire” itself.