The present work is a result of a qualitative investigation aimed at getting to know psychoanalysts and Gestalt therapist's opinions on the impact the Internet has on their patients. According to the interviewees, clinical practice involving Internet users reveals that the latter are undergoing important subjective changes. Although these changes are still largely unknown and cannot be integrated in a model of subjectivity, therapists were able to identify some characteristics patients who use the Internet tend to have in common. These characteristics are: the pleasure they experiment in cyberspace, the feeling of omnipotence that originates in Internet use, the new ways patients deal with their own bodies when engaged in virtual activities and the excesses they venture in while online. Finally, examination of these characteristics and of the results of research conducted by other investigators revealed an interesting convergence that provides starting points for a theoretical reflection on contemporary subjectivity.
Internet; subjectivity; clinical practice