Lost Goddesses: A Kaleidoscope on Porn

by Giorgio Tricarico

Porn is a complex symbol of our current world, and a shining example of the 'Shadow' of the Western culture. While many books essentially show its negative sides, the risks of addiction, the danger of damaging the relationship between sexes, and so on, this work focuses on porn as a phenomenon of our times, exploring its several colours, and trying to capture its inner logic and essence. Despite its pervasive ubiquity in the internet and in the lives of many, porn is apparently the ultimate taboo in the consulting in fact, very rarely does a patient mention something detailed about his or her use of porn. In parallel with its growing presence, the last forty years have witnessed a significant growth of publications about porn. The present work aims at deepening some aspects of internet porn from the perspective of Analytical Psychology, seeing it as symbol of the complexity of the human psyche, emerged in a specific moment of the history of consciousness.

123 pages, Kindle Edition

Published March 26, 2018

Reviews

[Joshua · Rating 3 out of 5]

Porn, in an age saturated with images, is ubiquitous, and this very ubiquity reveals something about our way of being in the world. It has become a multi-million dollar industry and has, to some extent, been recognized as a part of broader cultural phenomena. Pamela Paul, in her 2005 book Pornified speaks of the increasing pornification of culture. Tricarico takes a different takes a quite different tack, arguing that the porn industry itself has not been the prime mover in the sexualisation or pornification of culture, but that our understanding of porn needs to deal with the complex set of questions including its relationship to technology, what German philosopher Gunther Anders termed the 'iconomania' of the third industrial revolution, the seductions of advertising culture, the specialisation of work and the loss of personal agency, the shadow side of sexuality, feigning pleasure in absymal circumstances, and finally to attempts to recover the sacred.

Tricarico weaves together a number of perspectives on porn in an effort to comprehend it as a 'complex symbol of our times.' It is a symbol in the sense defined by C.G. Jung, 'a place where several elements are thrown together, referring, alluding... to something that is partially unutterable." (Lost Goddesses x) Hence the book's subtitle - A Kaleidoscope on Porn Still, while he attempts to address the issue from a variety of perspectives and resist the temptation of merely condemning or praising his subject, the work is not eclectic. Ultimately it is a tragedy, a story of loss - the titular lost goddesses.

Porn actresses become, in Tricarico's reading, the displaced descendants of the 'sacred prostitution' rituals of ancient societies. "Contemporary porn could be seen as the desacralized, technological, and consumerist counterpart o the so-called 'sacred prostitution,'... ( Lost Goddesses It is within this context that he announces the hope of his book, which is the hope for a changed society in which even porn could become something other than what it is currently. It is a faint hope, and comes on the end of a very brutal look at the fear, hatred and profanation that currently drives the production and consumption of porn.

[Mohammed Hilmi · Rating 5 out of 5]

Looking for a meaning in a meaningless world may prove difficult. In this age of consumerism the modern human will find it hard to live a life like he desires to the fullest. Because these desires are not his but the ghosts of the past and the shadows of a future that the corporations want, building for it by every mean advertisements and empty promises. Loneliness and depression these illnesses of this era will help to build this dark future.

[Forhåpentligvis Greit · Rating 5 out of 5]

Amazing and deep. Extremely underrated. I don't understand why this book isn't more popular?!