Theodore and the fantasy of the self, or afective relationships with machines that look like humans, and humans that also look like humans

Abstract

Our models for affective relationships can be found in cultural products as novels, poetry and films. How does a relation begin, continue, and end? Which are the usual characters, or the plot points which structure its development? These are questions that make part of narratives produced and reproduced in our cultural background. From a narrative psychology perspective, affective relationships fit a dynamic in which different characters propose lines of development (intrigues), which in turn prescribe how our participation should be, in which we result embodied, creating the illusion of a “real” relation that it’s no more than a virtual fantasy, being these last terms interchangeable. The fantasy of the self is a strategic narration that we impose to the other and to ourselves for the relation to be and take sense. I use the film Her (Spike Jonze, 2013) to reflect on these topics, using the doubts about the possibility/virtuality of the human-machine relationship for extending the metaphoric of the fantasy of the self in the affective relationship. In the tradition of the romantic and science-fiction narrative, the machine is that we try to impose on our demiurgic fantasy, imperfect perfection of human beings, and that finally transcends us, raising doubts about the reality/virtuality of our own presence in the narrations in which we lived