The Seattle Psychoanalytic Society and Institute presents 

Guys & Dolls: Intimacy in the Technological Era

with Danielle Knafo, Ph.D.

What is it that makes a doll the ideal woman in a man’s eyes? Why would a man prefer a doll to a real woman? The Pygmalion myth, in which a man creates the woman of his dreams, indicates that the appeal of a man-made woman reaches far back in time.

We are living in an age of unprecedented technological advances. These changes are influencing what it means to be human and how we relate to each other and to inanimate objects. On Friday night, Dr. Knafo will discuss the subculture of men whose desire is directed at high-end love dolls. Jack, who called himself an "iDollator," was living happily with his doll, Maya for 2 years. Eventually, he sought therapy. Friday’s lecture, “Men who Love Dolls,” discusses how both he and Dr. Knafo changed in the process. It also raises questions regarding the future of relational life. 

Men who choose doll partners have a female counterpart in women who take themselves as objects, women who strive to become doll-like. To seek artificially constructed femininity and to want to be an artificial female are essentially two sides of the same coin. 

Saturday’s first lecture explores a common form of female perversion—specifically, inhibition of agency and objectification of self in women, which Dr. Knafo calls the Barbie Syndrome. Dr. Knafo will deliver a presentation titled, “Women Who Want to be Dolls,” in which she describes her psychoanalytic treatment with Barbara, a woman in her twenties whose main desire was to be thin, beautiful, and nonsexual, like a Barbie doll – “Daddy’s little girl”. Barbara initially presented as a two-dimensional, Barbie doll-like pleaser, and, with the help of treatment, she progressed to a vital, three-dimensional woman capable of expressing a wide range of feelings and having life experiences previously denied her.

Freud considered the unconscious a site of repressed wishes and desires whose influence extends to the farthest reach of conscious life. Today, such desires find new expression on the internet, which allows anonymity and accessibility. Replacing “real world” skins with digital ones, users create virtual personas to promote their secret passions. The virtual space of consciousness is well matched to the virtual space of the web, though sexual and social enactments within the latter can have dangerous real-world consequences. In “Digital Desire and the Online Imposter: Catfishing,” Dr. Knafo examines the darker side of the marriage between desire and communication technology. Through the phenomenon of “catfishing,” this paper raises questions about the nature of the human self and the role it plays in deception. Understanding how patients use the internet helps provide access to their unconscious desires.

Prior to this conference, SPSI’s Art Salon Committee will be showing the film, “Lars and the Real Girl” on Friday, October 4, 2019 at 6pm, at the Seattle Psychoanalytic Society and Institute. If you would like to attend this free screening and discussion (with wine and appetizers), please RSVP to zan@spsi.org. 

Learning Objectives:

Friday presentation:

1. Participants will learn about new technologies that are creating novel forms of intimacy.
2. Participants will understand how the use of the transference and countertransference helps some men become less afraid of becoming involved with a real woman.

Saturday presentations:

1. Participants will consider why so many women tend to objectify themselves.
2. Participants will learn ways to address seemingly superficial issues, like beauty, in psychoanalytic treatment.
3. Attendees will learn about the phenomenon of catfishing, a new form of perversion rampant in the digital dating scene.
4. Attendees will contemplate the timeliness of the catfishing phenomenon in the context of the current attacks on truth.