1 Watch the video and put the
words into the gaps in the text
Clinicians working with (1)____ have started to realise how important
it was to start to understand the (2)___of electronic media, the internet,
BBM, all sorts of things on the young people. It is very difficult for us,
old persons, to understand how much there has been a (3)___ change in
relationship even between young people because of these new tools. In the
past, adolescence was really a time of emotional (4)____, discretion and
sometimes physical (5)_____.
Now young people tend to share
their emotions, their thoughts, their love and to (6)____ it to the world
through Facebook, through the internet, from very personal (7)____, texts but
also pictures of them that, in the past, I, we would have (8)____, or maybe
shared only with a few friends. This also has led to a possibility to get in
touch with anybody at any time. In the older days, maybe school time was when
you interacted, but then you went back home. Now at 11 pm, your phone starts
to (9)____ because somebody has said something about you and then suddenly
your whole group of friends is starting to comment. Not only this, but
adolescence was a time where your sense of identity and also of sexual
identity was developing.
Nowadays anybody has access to material which 20 years ago, 25 years
ago was limited to paying adults. Therefore they are going to have to come to
terms with (10)____, which at a certain age, can be (11)____, but also lead
sometimes to absolutely surprising expectations with regard to what is okay
or not, and how one should (12)____ with one’s boyfriend or one’s girlfriend.
More deeply than this, there is an issue with the development of what I would
call identity, subjectivity.
The (13)____ Jacques Lacan talks about the ‘mirror stage’, as a key
phase in the development of personality. This mirror stage is when the child,
a (14)____, for the first time recognises himself or herself in the mirror:
“This is me.” It is a very important moment because before that you had a
sense of yourself but then you start to (15)_____ an image. I mean you’re
also this, and you (16)____ that what you see in the mirror is what others
see of you. So you have to (17)____ reality but also a very strange aspect of
reality, which is your image. This image you can manipulate, you can dress
up, you can put some makeup on yourself, but at the same time there is
something that you can’t change, which is the reality of your body - how tall
you are, how blonde, or dark haired, how fast, how muscular, how pretty. You
negotiate something with that sense of reality, one of the problems that we
see now is that when you are dealing with friends through the internet, very
often you can manipulate this image, you can change it. And the extreme
example is represented by some games in which you are actually, on screen, an
avatar. You are an electronic creature, and the quality of this (18)____ you
determine, you invent. Now if you can be powerful and fast and beautiful and
clever and always winning for hours and hours and also in your interaction
with friends, how is this going to impact on the sense of self, when you are
back to reality, where you’re playing, when you’re having fun with real
others? What do you expect of them, but also what do you expect of yourself?
And it is very possible that the very nature of the electronic media is
having an (19)____ on the developments of structures that, we psychoanalysts
would call, the ego ideal or narcissism, which actually means in simple terms
the image of yourself, what you expect of yourself, your value but also your
hopes, your plans, your (20)___ life.
How could you deal with the change that this involves, if there’s a
massive disappointment then in reality when, having being world champion
footballer on FIFA, a game, then suddenly you can’t kick a ball. Or you
realise, you may discover over the years that, to kick a ball, you need to
learn, when actually onscreen it’s a completely different process of
learning, it’s a learning that is actually (21)_____from one game to the
other largely? So suddenly you discover that to be as good as you thought,
you’re going to have maybe to make an effort, to work, to discover and to
accept that you don’t know, which is the first step towards (22)_____. Could
it be that it is that sort of electronic impact that explains why nowadays
young people want to be (23)___? Do they have a skill - can they sing, can
they act, can they play? Maybe not. Does it matter? No, because actually what
you want is the status, not necessarily the apprenticeship, the long process
and actually (24)____ the skills and the qualities (25)___. So there is a
divorce between reality and the imaginary world. This divorce always existed
but, in the past, the reality principle brought you back to a more (26)___or
realistic position.
Nowadays there is
an (27)___ amount of (28)___ because what you have experienced as real life,
but is in fact a virtual life, does not fit your experience of your real
life. How much is this connected with, not just disappointment, but (29)____,
is something that we’re going to discover probably over the next 10 to 20
years, but it’s very important that clinicians, professionals, start to think
about this modification already now.
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radical
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impact
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exuberance
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secrecy
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adolescents
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comments
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bleep
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expose
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hidden
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behave
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images
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traumatic
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impact
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toddler
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assume
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creature
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expectations
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take into account
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psychoanalyst
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become
aware
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celebs
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required
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transferable
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knowledge
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humble
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mastering
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psychopathology
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frustration
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enormous
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2 Vocabulary focus. Sudy the words and word combinations, practise
their translation, spelling. Check your knowledge
in the test. Play vocabulary game and set your own vocabulary game record.
3 Mark the following statements as True or False
1.
Today young people like secrecy and don’t share their
feelings with friends.
2.
In the old days young people communicated at school,
but with internet they can start talking even late at night.
3.
Some images on the internet can be traumatic for young
people.
4.
Young people never model their behavior with
boyfriends or girlfriends on what they see online.
5.
Self-image of a person can be changed.
6.
Internet gives new ways to manipulate and change self image.
7.
Electronic media is having an impact on the
development of psychic.
8.
Ego ideal is very stable and cannot be changed by internet.
9.
Expectations and skills gained online can be easily
transferred to real life.
10. Young people value
knowledge and are ready to work really hard to become famous.
11. To become internet
celebrity one has to be talented.
12. Virtual life is a
preparation for real life.
4 Answer the Questions
1.
How do young people use internet and electronic media
today? What kind of information can they share with their friends?
2.
How has communication pattern changed in recent years?
When, where and with whom do young people prefer to communicate today?
3.
What is the connection between expectations, real life
relationships and internet?
4.
What is ‘mirror image’? How is it affected by
internet?
5.
What techniques can young people use to modify their
image?
6.
What is the relation between ‘virtual’ skills and
real-life skills? Can internet help gain knowledge or understand its
importance?
7.
Why do young people want to become stars and
celebrities? How can internet and electronic media help them?