Are you one of the 500 million Facebook enthusiasts? Today, not being on the social network means being out of the loop, as the saying goes. The story dates back to 2004: Mark Zuckerberg, an ingenious student at Harvard University in California, created the famous social network. Originally intended exclusively for university students, Facebook has now been accessible worldwide for four years. Besides being a trend, it helps to create connections, “it offers a cheap remedy for narcissistic failures,” explains Jean-Luc Vannier, Psychoanalyst and Course Coordinator at the University of Nice. “Vulnerable, isolated, and lacking recognition, they find in Facebook a bridge, weave a bond, and think they are giving depth to their existence.” Facebook is about existing through the gaze of others; it’s also about loving the search for new contacts, the leap into the unknown, and the randomness of encounters. Jean-Luc Vannier asserts that it is “a manifestation of desire.” To this, we can add the effect of immediacy “which perfectly matches the pace suggested by hyperconsumption.” A few clicks are enough to connect two individuals. “A pure infantile fantasy of omnipotence.”
When “the Ego is not master in its own house”
According to Sigmund Freud, the father of psychoanalysis, the individual is not master of himself. He would be endowed with unconscious impulses that act in spite of him. Dependency can be mentioned as an impulse. The principle of dependency is about not being able to do without something. For Jean-Luc Vannier, “disengaging by leaving the real for the virtual already constitutes a form of dependency.” On Facebook, humans are exclusively confronted with virtuality. The community site has the ability to separate individuals from social life: “especially if they come to believe that Facebook has become social life itself.” And when they must return to reality, they feel overwhelmed. “The individual who retreats, if you will, body and soul, into virtuality, signs a personal and/or family suffering, the origins and hidden structures of which deserve to be elucidated through care.”
It should also be noted that the social network has given rise to new categories of clinical pathologies, those of bonds and attachment, which concerns Jean-Luc Vannier. If Facebook contributes to the creation of new psychological disorders, it also prevents spontaneous encounters with other individuals. These encounters allow us to nourish our own identity. “On Facebook, this encounter seems at the very least sanitized,” perceives Jean-Luc Vannier. To detach from Facebook, he advises “a patient and long relearning of reality. Gently to avoid decompensation, to overcome resistance, and to bypass secondary benefits.”
Facebook has now grown to a phenomenal extent. With the help of a simple application, users can locate their friends. One wonders if the individual can maintain their privacy. “Let’s keep hope that we will never manage to know what you think and desire in the intimacy of your brain,” comments Jean-Luc Vannier. Next Wednesday, “The Social Network” (Le réseau social) hits the big screen. This film traces the story of the success story. A success story far from over.
