DOI: 10.4324/9781003195849-10 89 7 AUXILIARY ORGANS AND EXTIMATE IMPLANTS Coming to Terms with Technology from a Psychoanalytical Perspective Hub Zwart Introduction When it comes to presenting a psychoanalytic perspective on technology, Freud’s essay Civil- isation and Its Discontents provides an obvious point of departure (1930/1948). In this psycho- analytical classic, Freud describes how human beings, equipping themselves with “auxiliary organs,” may evolve into “prosthetic gods,” although such organic extensions evidently in- troduce new challenges and frustrations as well—which explains why technology, allegedly benefcial to humans, at the same time triggers ambivalence and discontent. Freud’s view on technological entities as organic extensions is complemented by a somewhat diferent approach, initiated in a manuscript dating from the early days of psychoanalysis and known as the Entwurf. Here, Freud proposed the outlines of a philosophical anthropology which is feshed out in more detail many years later in another psychoanalytic classic, namely Be- yond the Pleasure Principle (Freud 1920/1940). After presenting the core ideas developed in these texts, the focus of my contribution will shift to the work of Jacques Lacan, who will also guide our reading of Freud. Lacan’s famous programmatic “return to Freud,” I will argue, does not solely consist of close textual re-reading. Rather, Lacan combines textual analysis (the retour to Freud) with an imposing series of detours, reframing Freud’s concepts and discoveries by connecting them with important developments in twentieth-century research felds, such as structural linguistics, ethology, cybernetics, informatics and molec- ular biology. Whereas Freud’s own understanding of science remained very much indebted to research practices in which he himself had been initiated during the fnal decades of the nineteenth century (notably neuro-physiology), Lacan demonstrated the relevance of psy- choanalysis for coming to terms with contemporary technoscience, resulting in a psychoan- alytic philosophy of technology, albeit in outline (Zwart 2017, 2019a). My contribution will notably zoom in on the role of technology in what Lacan refers to as the “symbolisation of the real.” Finally, I will focus on Lacan’s assessment (or rather: diagnostic) of information technologies, especially paying attention to the role of gadgets, as technological entities with a specifc profle of their own.