Lost Goddesses (PDF)

Porn is a complex symbol of our current world, and a shining example of the 'Shadow' of the Western culture. While many books essentially show its negative sides, the risks of addiction, the danger of damaging the relationship between sexes, and so on, this work focuses on porn as a phenomenon of our times, exploring its several colours, and trying to capture its inner logic and essence.Despite its pervasive ubiquity in the internet and in the lives of many, porn is apparently the ultimate taboo in the consulting room: in fact, very rarely does a patient mention something detailed about his or her use of porn. In parallel with its growing presence, the last forty years have witnessed a significant growth of publications about porn. Most of these essentially show porn's negative sides, while a minority of books try to emphasize its positive role in the subversion of the dominant values. The present work aims at deepening some aspects of internet porn from the perspective of Analytical Psychology, seeing it as symbol of the complexity of the human psyche, emerged in a specific moment of the history of consciousness. Porn is put in relation with technology, with consumerism, with our neglecting the body, with the dictatorship of the image, with the individual and the collective shadow, and with the unconscious nostalgia of the sacred and the divine. Lost Goddesses is not only addressed to psychotherapists, but to anyone interested in understanding porn as a phenomenon of the society of technology, its inner logic, and its multiple layers and connections.