What is this?
Technology is changing what it feels like to be a person. We form relationships with machines that talk back, outsource our thinking to systems we don’t understand, and meet ourselves daily in the distorting reflection of the feed. This newsletter looks underneath all that by taking a psychoanalytic perspective on the digitally mediated self, written through my own framework of applied psychodynamics.
Expect an essay a couple times a month: one question each time, taken slowly, about AI, digital culture, and the psyche.
Who is Aaron Balick?
I’m a psychotherapist, author, psychological consultant and keynote speaker. For over two decades I’ve worked at the intersection of psyche and culture, exploring how our inner worlds are shaped by the systems around us: especially technology. My book The Psychodynamics of Social Networking was the first to apply psychoanalytic theory to social media, and I’ve since developed Applied Psychodynamics as a framework for understanding the unconscious forces at work across technology and AI, leadership, culture, and modern relationships. As a public psychotherapist I’ve covered just this sort of stuff for the general public in the press, both when I was a psychology of culture columnist for GQ, and through my books Keep Your Cool and The Little Book of Calm: all my writing demonstrates a commitment to making depth psychology accessible to everyone in the world we’re living in now: hyperconnected, accelerated, and often disorienting.
Do I need to be an expert to understand what you’re writing about?
Absolutely not. My aim is to share insights in a way almost anybody can understand. I won’t be dumbing down — I’ll assume you’re intelligent enough to work things out — but I won’t bedazzle you with jargon (unless I explain it) or put you off with over-abstraction. If I do, tell me and I’ll try harder.
This space is for readers who want to slow down and go deeper: into the psychological forces that drive us, and the cultural ones that distract us. If that speaks to you, subscribe — it’s free, and every essay arrives in your inbox.
