Open Lecture with Alessandra Lemma
Book ticketsOrganised by:
Birmingham Trust for Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy
Description
BTPP is pleased to host a talk by Alessandra Lemma. This talk is based on a chapter from Alessandra Lemma’s forthcoming book ‘Psychotechnical becomings: psychoanalysis, identity, desire and mourning in times of AI and digital mediation’.
Alessandra Lemma is a Fellow of the British Psychoanalytic Society and a Chartered Clinical and Counselling Psychologist with extensive experience as a clinician, academic, and author. She is currently Visiting Professor in the Psychoanalysis Unit, University College London, A Consultant at the Anna Freud Centre, and Visiting Professor at Centro Winnicott, Rome. Alessandra Lemma has had roles in the past as Head of Psychology and Professor of Psychological Therapies at the Tavistock Clinic (in conjunction with Essex University). She is recognized internationally for contributions to psychoanalysis, trauma, the impact of technology on the psyche, transgender identities, and ethics. She is the recipient of the 2022 Sigourney Award, the 2025 Scharff Award for distinguished contributions to Psychoanalysis and the BPC’s 2025 Bernard Rattigan Award for Psychoanalysis and Diversity. Her forthcoming books are: Psychotechnical Becomings; Psychoanalysis, Identity, Desire and Mourning in Times of AI and Digital Mediation (Routledge, 2026) and Journeying Through Psychoanalysis: Lessons from the Couch (Wiley, 2027).
Abstract:
This lecture introduces the concept of the digital superego to conceptualize how algorithmic systems reorganize adolescent embodiment. Under the algorithmic gaze, the body becomes a monitored surface subjected to perpetual judgment, where recognition is quantified and conditional. Drawing on clinical material, it explores how interoceptive awareness – the felt sense of bodily interiority – is displaced by exteroceptive evaluation, a mode of relating to the body as an object of scrutiny. Psychoanalytic practice, in turn, is called upon to reclaim the body as a site of uncertainty and relational encounter, resisting the algorithmic conversion of selfhood into performance.
To read beforehand:
Leskauskas, D. (2025). Encounters with totalitarian objects in the superego development of Generation Z adolescents. International Forum of Psychoanalysis, 34(1), 9–14.
Tickets for the event costs £40. There are limited spaces available. Please register via the link or the BTPP website.
