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Vol. 45 No. 1 (2025)
Revista Portuguesa de Psicanálise

Fundamentos

The Great Illusionist and the Digital Double: Psychoanalytic Reflections on Artificial Intelligence in the Advent of a Hyperbolic Reality

https://doi.org/10.51356/rpp.451a1

Published 2025-06-30

  • Filipe Leão Miranda
    • ,
  • Joana Pizarro Bravo

Filipe Leão Miranda
Sociedade Portuguesa de Psicanálise

Joana Pizarro Bravo
Sociedade Portuguesa de Psicanálise

Abstract

This paper reflects on the relationship between human beings and digital technology and its impact on the development and functioning of the mind. It considers the disruptive effect of the accelerated introduction of the digital, the profound changes in the organisation of social and family life, and the potential consequences of the absence of time for the maturation of the adaptive processes necessary for structuring the mind. The aim is to understand how the hyperconnected life in the digital space, from childhood onwards, interferes with the proper construction of mental space. Potential risks of psychopathological configurations are identified in terms of reality apprehension, the ability to think and subjective emotional experience, as a result of the experience of space and time’s distortion, which seems to offer a distinct geometry of reality. By analysing the different characteristics of generative Artificial Intelligence, we explore the possible reasons for its creation and the risks inherent in the interaction between human beings and machines, considering the illusory component of the experience and the unbearable finitude inherent to the human condition. Psychoanalysis is proposed as an appropriate theoretical/clinical framework for problematising/intervening in the phenomena arising from the coalescence of mental and digital spaces.

Keywords

Human Mind, Artificial Intelligence, Hyperbolic Reality, Digital Technology, Psychoanalysis

PDF (Português)

Author Biography

Filipe Leão Miranda

Psicólogo Clínico e Psicoterapeuta. Membro Efetivo e Formador da Sociedade Portuguesa de Psicoterapias Breves (SPPB). Membro Candidato da Sociedade Portuguesa de Psicanálise (SPP).

Joana Pizarro Bravo

Jurista, especializada em Direito da Comunicação Social e Regulação dos Media, desenvolvendo trabalho na área da Inteligência Artificial. Membro Candidato da Sociedade Portuguesa de Psicanálise (SPP).

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