WCP 2025

Background. Recent advances in algorithmic content generation hold promise and controversy in many areas, including work, education, art, research, and psychological assessment and intervention. Drawing on Higgins’s Self-Discrepancy Theory, we explore how AI-generated images can be used to assist in expressing people’s thoughts about their self as they see it, desire it to be, and feel others expect them to be.
Method. Participants used the software Midjourney to generate images representing actual/own, ideal/own, and ought/other self-states by providing a list of verbal prompts as input, iteratively modifying the results, and selecting a single image to illustrate each state. The images were used within the same session as visual anchors for semi-structured interviews to derive verbal accounts of self-states and discrepancies, complemented by psychometric assessment.
Results. Participants found it feasible to depict their self-states and the resulting images helpful in describing and contrasting their actual/own self-concept with their ideal/own and ought/other self-guides. The protocol fits within a single session and, beyond conventional verbal transcripts, yields a record of verbal prompts and images for subsequent analysis. We describe the protocol and provide an analysis of verbal accounts alongside their pictorial anchors.
Conclusions. Text-to-image generation as an assistive interview tool promises to be engaging for clients and useful in addressing the long-standing difficulty of qualifying and quantifying discrepancies between self-states by allowing the rapid creation of highly descriptive images without reliance on artistic ability. We interpret the interaction process within Vygotsky’s Sociocultural Theory, where AI is used as a tool or interactive artefact in a mediated action aimed at a more complex and accurate self-expression through the facilitation and visualisation of ideas.

Introduction   Youth are not only the “next generation,” but the very architects of the future. Yet in today’s digital landscape, the growing use of algorithm-driven social media has begun to reshape their psychological and academic development in subtle but profound ways. This presentation explores how the unconscious structures of the psyche, self, ego, and object relations are being reorganized under the influence of digital platforms. The question at the center of this inquiry is: What are the psychoanalytic implications of social media’s pervasive presence in the lives of young people?
Methodology / Approach This presentation draws upon psychoanalytic theory, particularly Freudian and post-Freudian concepts such as the pleasure principle, ego development, transitional objects, and identity formation. It integrates clinical reflections with theoretical analysis, and builds upon insights from the author’s doctoral research on the voice structure in the digital space and the future of illusion.
Results / Findings Social media environments foster performative digital identities, amplify the pleasure principle, and diminish ego strength, all of which compromise the psychic functions necessary for emotional regulation, deep learning, and authentic connection. Parasocial interactions and curated personas act as displaced transitional objects, offering illusory forms of attachment while weakening real-world relational capacities. These dynamics contribute to a broader psychic reorganization that mirrors the documented decline in academic engagement, not as a cognitive failure, but as a symptom of disrupted symbolic development.
Conclusion / Perspective The erosion of youth potential in the digital age is not merely an educational crisis, it is a psychic one. If the capacity to think deeply, feel authentically, and relate meaningfully is undermined, we risk building a world where inner life becomes flattened by the algorithm. Psychoanalysis has a unique role to play in understanding and addressing this shift. This contribution invites a deeper conversation about how we can meet these challenges therapeutically, culturally, and politically.