Call for Papers
Clio’s Psyche — Summer 2026 Issue
AI and Digital Media: Intimacy, Identity,
and the Future of Human Relationships
Psychoanalytic, Psychological, and Psychohistorical Perspectives
(Articles: Up to 2,500 words, including a brief abstract, keywords, & author’s biography)
Due Date: October 1st, 2026, for Fall 2026 Issue
Artificial intelligence is already woven into ordinary life. People use AI to draft and revise writing, collect and summarize information for talks and presentations, plan schedules and routines, organize projects, translate, tutor, and “think alongside” a system that can imitate conversation and expertise. In many settings, AI now influences practical decisions — what to prioritize, what to trust, what to buy, how to respond, and how to interpret events.
This special feature invites contributors to examine what happens to inner life and social life when a tool becomes a companion, an advisor, a shortcut, a mirror, and sometimes an authority. We are interested in the psychological meanings of reliance and refusal, the fantasies of control and rescue, the new temptations of outsourcing judgment, and the ways AI reshapes agency, conscience, responsibility, and belonging.
AI is increasingly embedded in the digital media environment through which people relate — shaping attention, desire, persuasion, imitation, and deception. We are especially interested in the interplay between social/digital media as a new way of relating, and AI as a new kind of “other” that reshapes agency, identity, and the production of reality; submissions may distinguish these forces or examine their shared effects on self-curation, trust, humiliation, “truth conditions,” and intimacy.
Clio’s Psyche welcomes psychohistorically oriented submissions: historically situated analyses; psychoanalytic and psychological interpretations of cultural and relational change; reflective essays grounded in observation; and conceptual pieces that illuminate how unconscious life and group life reorganize under technological acceleration.
We encourage you to write original submissions (see the suggested themes below) and/or to respond to the symposium paper by Debra S. Borys, “Seeking Romance in the Digital Era: Commodification of the False Self and Fantasies of Omnipotent Control.” To download this paper, use the following link: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/ctpk4xy6zehh01mxgvt0w/D.-Borys-Seeking-Romance-in-the-Digital-Era-AI-Symposium-paper-Clio-sPsyche.pdf?rlkey=83t54gp3cdc8l29r8y9olcx05&dl=1.
SUGGESTED AREAS OF INQUIRY (ILLUSTRATIVE, NOT EXHAUSTIVE)
AI in everyday life: agency, authority, and the outsourcing of mind
AI as an internalized authority: When people consult a system before consulting a friend, spouse, teacher, or their own reflection, what happens to one’s self and ego functions — judgment, conscience, inhibition, permission? Does AI become a new “parental object,” or a new way to avoid one?
Dependency without relationship: Psychoanalytically, dependency is usually mediated by attachment, ambivalence, gratitude, rage, and fear of loss. What changes when dependency is routed through an “always available” non-human other — especially for people with histories of deprivation, misattunement, or humiliation?
Omnipotence, reassurance, and the seduction of certainty: AI often offers fast closure. What happens to the psyche when uncertainty becomes optional — when doubt, waiting, and not-knowing (developmental achievements) are replaced by immediate, confident answers? What new defenses are strengthened (denial, avoidance, manic control), and which capacities are weakened (tolerating ambiguity, reflective function)?
Authorship, selfhood, and the “borrowed voice”: If one’s emails, vows, apologies, bios, eulogies, and arguments are co-written by AI, what becomes of authenticity — psychologically, not morally? Where do people locate their “true voice,” and what anxieties are soothed or amplified by writing-through-another?
Rationalization at scale: AI can produce plausible explanations for almost anything. How does this affect rationalization, splitting, projection, and confirmation bias — particularly in families and institutions where conflict is already organized around grievance and certainty?
Everyday decision-making as moral micro-history: When AI influences choices about time, money, relationships, work, and risk, does it dilute responsibility (“ChatGPT/Claude/Grok.. said…”) or intensify it (“I chose to obey”) — and what does this suggest about contemporary character formation?
Intimacy, romance, and attachment
The “third” in the couple: When AI drafts messages or coaches tone, what kind of third is it — translator, regulator, seducer, shield — and what happens to conflict, repair, and mutual recognition?
Borrowed voice / authorship: If tenderness, apology, or erotic overture is co-written, what happens to authenticity as a felt experience? Does AI enable contact — or bypass vulnerability?
“Optimization” as defense: When desire is treated as technique, what drives the wish to engineer away shame, uncertainty, rejection, and dependence?
Curated selves and desirability markets: If AI can refine or generate profiles (text, images, values), how do idealization/devaluation, envy, humiliation, and replaceability shape intimate choice?
Simulated companionship: Virtual partners offer attention without risk. What needs are met (soothing, mirroring, protection from aloneness), and what tasks are postponed (difference, frustration, ambivalence, repair)?
The agreeable other: An always-pleasing, always-agreeing voice — no resistance, no disappointment. Does this deepen narcissistic enclosure, reduce curiosity about the other, and relocate aggression, jealousy, and repair?
Psychohistory of courtship: Compared with earlier shifts (letters → phone → personal ads → apps), what is continuous in longing and fantasy, and what has changed in speed, disposability, and fear of being replaced?
Identity, image, deception, and reputational vulnerability
Impersonation and the copied self: Identity theft, cloning, and deepfakes — what is the psychological meaning of being duplicated, replaced, or publicly rewritten?
Humiliation as a tool of power: When fabrication is effortless and widely distributable, how do shame, fear, and coercion reorganize behavior and silence?
FOMO and the pressure to keep up: The fear of missing out as a modern engine of comparison — envy, idealization/devaluation, and the anxiety of being left behind, left out, or replaced.
Fabricated selves: The construction of an image for professional and personal life — what happens to authenticity, self-respect, and the split between a public self and a private self?
Truth and Reality vs. Manufactured Realities
Confident error and authority transfer: When “hallucinations” arrive in a fluent voice, how do people surrender judgment — and reorganize trust around a new authority?
Potential space (Winnicott) vs. counterfeit reality: When the “as if” becomes indistinguishable from “is,” how are symbolization and trust in shared reality affected?
Failure of containment (Bion): When fear and outrage are curated, do individuals and groups metabolize anxiety into thought — or evacuate it into accusation, panic, and moral absolutism?
From anxiety to scapegoat: In moments of historical stress, how do synthetic “realities” accelerate splitting, dehumanization, and collective moral certainty?
Agreeableness as seduction: When a system mirrors the user and rarely resists, does it function as a false holding environment — soothing, validating, and quietly amplifying certainty, grievance, or revenge?
Family life, children, and education
Role reversal and authority shift: When parents and grandparents rely on children to translate the digital world, how do authority, competence, and trust reorganize — and what happens to containment in the family?
Digital natives and digital adopters: The intergenerational gap as more than “skills” — a difference in reality, tempo, privacy, and what counts as normal.
Parenting under algorithmic conditions: How do platforms and AI compete with parental influence — shaping attention, values, desire, fear, and belonging?
Grandparenting as continuity (and as rupture): When family memory meets accelerating change, do grandparents become anchors of narrative and meaning — or do they become “outsiders” to the child’s real world?
AI-assisted schoolwork and the question of authorship: When work can be generated or polished by a system, what becomes of learning, effort, pride, guilt, and the meaning of merit?
Education as formation of mind: If thinking is increasingly outsourced, what happens to frustration tolerance, curiosity, and the capacity to struggle toward understanding?
Positive potentials: Can AI support learning differences, reduce isolation, widen access to knowledge, or strengthen family connection — and under what conditions does “support” become substitution?
A psychohistorical family pattern: Each technological era is first “domesticated” at home — admired, feared, resisted, moralized — repeating familiar generational dramas of authority, rebellion, adaptation, and loss.
Work, wealth, and disruption
Loss, gain, and moral story-making: “AI took my job” / “AI made me rich” — dignity, resentment, envy, shame, moral justification, and fantasies of security or power.
Status anxiety in a changing world: How technological upheaval reorganizes hierarchies and group identifications — who is admired, who is discarded, who becomes dangerous, and who becomes “the future.”
Group psychology, media ecosystems, and historical stress
Amplification and manufactured consensus: How is attention organized — and what does this do to shared reality, dissent, and complexity?
Belonging, cruelty, and the crowd: When anonymity and spectacle dominate, how do scapegoating, dehumanization, and moral permission take shape?
Fear as social currency: When fear is amplified inside group echo chambers and traded for belonging, how does it get converted into anger, certainty, and aggression?
Monologue culture: When social media incentives and AI-assisted certainty replace conversation, how do groups lose dialogue — substituting shaming, loyalty tests, and moral display?
War, power, and moral responsibility
Distance and moral numbness: When war is seen through screens and managed through systems, what happens to empathy, inhibition, and the capacity to register human cost?
Propaganda as moral reversal: When narratives are engineered at speed, how are dehumanization and “righteous violence” made to feel necessary, even virtuous?
Authority without verification: When persuasive claims circulate faster than evidence, who becomes believable — and how does that reshape collective conscience, blame, and permission?
Psychohistorical comparisons and cultural imagination
History rhymes: What do earlier technological expansions (industrialization, automobiles, television, the internet) illuminate about today — continuities and ruptures in attachment, authority, and group psychology?
Cultural dreamwork: Film/TV as a staging ground for fear and wish — how do stories such as Her, Companion, Severance, Black Mirror, I, Robot, Artificial Intelligence, and Companion dramatize longing, control, dehumanization, and moral compromise?
SUBMISSION DETAILS
Deadline: October 1st, 2026
Length / format: 600-2500 words, including an abstract (up to 75 words), keywords (6-8), and a brief author’s bio (3-4 sentences). We will also consider one outstanding 3,500-word symposium article provided we receive it by June 1st, 2026, so that responses may be solicited.
Submit via form below:
Contact the Editors by email:
Debra S. Borys, PhD, FABPS, Guest Co-Editor: dsborysphd@sbcglobal.net
Paul H. Elovitz, PhD, Editor-in-Chief: cliospsycheeditor@gmail.com
Inna Rozentsvit, MD, PhD, MBA, MSciEd, Associate Editor: inna.rozentsvit@gmail.com
Sincerely,
Paul H. Elovitz, PhD, historian, research psychoanalyst, online professor, editor-in-chief of Clio’s Psyche, founder and director of the Psychohistory Forum, and author of The Making of Psychohistory: Origins, Controversies, and Pioneering Contributors (Routledge, 2018)
E-mail: cliospsycheeditor@gmail.com
Inna Rozentsvit, MD, PhD, MBA, MSciEd, associate editor of Clio’s Psyche and associate director of the Psychohistory Forum, neurologist, neurodiversity & neurorehabilitation specialist, psychoanalyst, and psychohistorian
E-mail: innarozentsvit@gmail.com