Originally written for a friend's upcoming digital body horror zine. Thought I would share it here.
Polymorphous Apparatuses, Vol. XXVII, No. 3, August 1986
Erotic Dispersal: Transmission of a "Disembodied" Perversion
JACQUELINE TRAVERS, M.D. \ Chicago, IL
Described below is the case history of a patient initially presenting with a "fascination with disembodiment." A computer scientist in her 30s, "Harlan" was a leading researcher at the university where she was employed. Per her description, the symptomatic fascination began after the connection of her university's computer network to several others according to the Internet Protocol. "Disembodiment" occurred whenever Harlan made use of the internet, and she recounted how she felt as if, rather than along the neurons and synapses of her own body, her nerve network extended along the telecommunication lines through which she connected with other networks. The users of these networks were of interest to her only in so far as they facilitated this diffusion. The perverse nature of this fascination was immediately evident, and the patient readily admitted to her arousal at the abstract contact in which she engaged, as if she were involved in a sexual activity transmitted across the nation. The exhibitionist character of this perversion was already plain, but the voyeuristic character soon revealed itself as well: distant files accessed by Harlan were described as "exposed abstract bodies" which she could not directly touch. This raised the obvious question: was this really a fascination with disembodiment when the symptom concerned "abstract bodies"?
In fact, because these bodies could not be touched, the union was deterritorialized, allowing it to spread as an "inter-network embodiment". After more than a year of analysis, then, it was determined therefore the patient's word of choice, "disembodiment", enthymemically concealed the real object of her fascination: a disperse erotic embodiment. Moreover, the goal in seeking treatment was not treatment at all, but a further dispersal of this embodiment in the analyst through speaking of and transmitting her perversion. Upon being confronted with this interpretation, Harlan acknowledged its veracity and added that she was surprised that her motives had taken so long to uncover. This difficulty was due to resistance of the analyst, who did not wish to acknowledge the already-present traces of this relayed perversion within herself. The following paper does not, then, describe the patient's treatment; rather, it transmits her symptom.
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