‘Presented at the IAJS Conference “Jung & Vital Force” (December 5–7, 2025), this lecture explores the profound modern crisis of the digital landscape through the lens of analytical psychology.
Speaker Stephen John Garratt—an IAAP analyst and former internet media agency co-founder—bridges three decades of digital technology experience with depth psychology to examine how the modern attention economy systemically colonizes human consciousness.
By tracing the concept of attention from C.G. Jung’s early word association tests to its vital role in infant development, clinical analysis, and the process of individuation, this talk illustrates how attention serves as the essential mechanism that concentrates psychic energy (libido) into an active vital force. When algorithms hijack our gaze, our libido is rendered unavailable for internal psychological needs, causing individuation to stall and precipitating a collective collapse into exhaustion and fragmentation.
The presentation concludes with an urgent call for a Jungian-informed critical media theory to help individuals reclaim their psychological autonomy from the digital machine.
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⏳ TIMESTAMPS:
0:00 – Introduction: Libido, Attention, and Vital Force
01:30 – The Foundations of Analytical Psychology: Psyche Dissociability
03:15 – The Attention Economy vs. Critical Media Theory
04:45 – Attention in Academic Psychology: The Spotlight and the Gatekeeper
07:20 – The Paradox of “Flow” and Self-Awareness
08:50 – Attention & Libido: The Flow of Psychic Energy
10:40 – Transforming Libido: Jung’s Symbols as Psychic Transformers
12:30 – The Seed of Consciousness: Attention in Infant Development
15:15 – The Analytic Attitude: Attention as a Healing Factor in Therapy
17:00 – Mass Media and the Colonization of Attention
19:15 – The Narcissistic Medium: The Screen as a False Mirror
21:40 – The Excellence Narrative vs. Authentic Individuation
23:10 – Conclusion: Grounding the Psyche in Archetypal Forms
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#CarlJung #JungianPsychology #AttentionEconomy #AnalyticalPsychology #DepthPsychology #Libido #Individuation #MediaTheory
#JungianPsychology #AnalyticalPsychology #AttentionEconomy #DepthPsychology #LibidoTheory #CriticalMediaTheory #IAJS’.