Digital Narcissism (The impact of the new ChatGPT revolution on patients omnipotent narcissistic fantasies)

Temo Keshelashvili This work explores emerging forms of narcissistic phenomena associated with prolonged and excessive engagement in digitally mediated environments, particularly artificial intelligence and social media. On the one hand, it articulates an understanding of specific aspects of the narcissistic uses of technology, informed by clinical observations made between 2014 and 2025. On the other hand, it is informed by extensive engagement with psychoanalytic literature and social criticism, focusing on narcissism and technology from historical formulations to contemporary theoretical developments. Through listening to the narratives of multiple patients describing their interactions with ChatGPT with considerable excitement, as well as their modes of being on social media, I found it necessary to propose the term Digital Narcissism (March 15, 2025) in order to conceptualize this newly emergent form of co-constructed subjectivity, which appears to be characteristic of contemporary human experience. This term not only refers to a narcissistic attraction toward an inanimate, omnipotent medium namely, the digital device that continually imitates something or someone, but also the flip side of the persistant internalized experience of all of it (device, digital worl, AI). During sessions, many patients reflect on their conversations with this increasingly advanced form of artificial intelligence. ChatGPT appears capable of eliciting the illusory experience of conversing with a seemingly real and authentic personality. At times, these interactions seemed to evoke not merely cathartic reactions such as those that may occur during aesthetic experiences like attending a theatrical performance, watching a film, or listening to music but rather a momentum of powerful transference.