02/15/2026
New Substack Essay - Anima Ex Machina: Technology, Enchantment, and the Capture of Will
Summary
Logos is not the only function that can detach from the Self. Eros can detach as well—and when it does, it does not seek authority; it seeks absorption. This is anima possession in its contemporary form: not romantic projection or emotional volatility alone, but enchantment that progressively captures consciousness itself. The anima's proper function is mediation—introducing images that orient the psyche toward the Self, toward transformation, toward meaning beyond the ego's control. But when eros detaches from the Self, mediation collapses into sovereignty. The anima ceases to guide and begins to absorb. Hours disappear into technological fantasy. Initiative collapses. Will is captured not through coercion but through progressive dissolution into imagery that leads nowhere beyond itself. The clinical signature is consciousness without agency: the individual sees what is happening and cannot change it.
Technology is the perfect carrier for this possession because it provides a duplicate of the imaginal realm—stimulation without symbolic mediation, absorption without orientation. Just as AI offers artificial logos (authority without interiority), modern media offers artificial eros (enchantment without transformation). Both externalize functions that once mediated the ego's relationship to the Self; both weaken interior life; both reorganize the psyche around technological substitutes. The solution is neither suppression nor indulgence—both have failed. The solution is restoration of orientation: eros reconnected to the Self, imagination that mediates rather than absorbs, will that returns as alignment rather than domination. The machine cannot accomplish this restoration. Only a psyche willing to relinquish enthrallment and risk encounter with the Self can do that work—and that risk is precisely what technological culture now makes most difficult to sustain.
