In Response to A Mac -Lover

A few days ago a fellow contributor of the blogger world wrote an interesting take on
Mac- o - mania.The title of his blog was Psychosexual attachment to Macintosh. Here is a link to his blog http://siddharthadelkar.blogspot.com/2006_09_06_archive.html
Well quite confidently I decided to write about what Freud's take on psychosexual attachment to Macintosh would be and within a day I was lost in confusion about what my response would be.

I have always thought I enjoyed Freud's theory and the psychoanalytic world gave psychology a lot of pathbreaking ideas. In the time and frame that Freud developed his theory, human psyche was chained, burdened by societal norms, dos' and donts', conflicts and above all uncertainity in life and what better a solution than sex or love?

Everything and anything that resulted in Neurosis was termed to be sexual in nature. Not only is this incorrect but often misinterpreted by a lot of people who read Freud's theory without probably reading the history of the place Freud was based.

Nevertheless coming back to what I decided to write this blog for.Freud's concepts of Id, Ego and Superego can definitely be integrated in the loves for a Mac.
Given we are always striving towards creating a balance between the three, Id is the one that needs to be neglected and overruled by the Superego at times.

Mac-lovers probably would use the delete key often enough to reset their thoughts which translates to Freud's idea of the defense mechanism of 'Repression'.
Or going without food and water, aimlessly sticking to the computer screen trying to code, draw or read and not being interested in the outside world could be signs of a Mac - 0 - neurotic. Treatment of course would consist of psychoanalysis which would examine the childhood experiences of isolation that lead to this personality.

Of course there is a growing field of research out there and I'm sure it won't be long before we unfortunately would need deaddiction centers specifically for Computer addicts / Mac addicts (May be Apple can start working on a deaddiction vaccine!!!) OR Centers that specialize in Mac Abuse Counseling...............

I think Siddharth has a point when he talks about a huge stake for human computer interaction research which so far has concentrated on research on internet addiction but after my brief reading on this topic I didn't come across a single article related to the addictive symptoms of machines themselves......................So people out there......Think think....wake up research needs you!