by Amber Trotter, Psy.D.

LIFE IN A GLASS HOUSE

Foucault’s (1975) panopticon metaphor for modern society has become fully realized: we live under nearly constant surveillance. Political consequences are manifold and have been discussed extensively. As a clinician, I wonder about the psychic impact of glass house living.

The Radiohead song croons, “Well, of course I’d like to sit around and chat, but someone’s listening in.” Hyper-surveillance is inhibitory, or so Foucault (1975) believed; it breeds self-censure. The thought of being watched functions as internal pressure, fostering perfectionistic self-monitoring: the ego engages in a desperate, anxiety-ridden struggle to be flawless. Performance becomes paramount, at the expense of authentic relating, of sitting around and chatting. We might say that the pervasive and relatively invisible power of surveillance induces neurosis.

Panopticons consolidate power. Subjects are made to feel that there is no escape (Foucault, 1975). This can lead to hopelessness and apathy, as well as rage, repressed for fear of retribution: “don’t throw stones ... You should turn the other cheek/ Living in a glass house.” Repressed rage may erupt in twisted ways, or lead to an identification with the aggressor — in this case, technology and the ruling elite it serves. Surveillance is accepted as the inevitable byproduct of the digital era — and exalted as the progenitor of a transparent society. Analytic treatment is built on privacy, the antithesis of surveillance and transparency. Confidentiality is a sine qua non in the treatment of neurosis, potentiating free association and interpersonal trust. Privacy is essential to truly candid, wild, and potentially transgressive thought. In order to creatively experiment with the forbidden, the unknown, we must feel insulated from consequence.

Privacy changes our relationship to authority. Freud understood that when children first recognize that they can keep things hidden — that they can lie — this changes their assessment of their parents’ power, and of their own (Phillips, 2012). The capacity to get away with things is also crucial to developing as an ethical subject: you have to be able to make the wrong choices to make the right ones (Phillips, 2012). A social straightjacket is no substitute for an ethical compass. Transparency has benefits, but should not be mistaken for freedom.

As analytic clinicians increasingly consider sociopolitical context in their work, and utilize analytic theory to think about the world we live in, I hope the costs of life in a glass house and the importance of privacy can be further elucidated.