Volume 9 (2017), Issue 17

The Magazine of Media Studies stands for media studies that are oriented towards cultural studies and that examine individual media in order to explore political powers and epistemic constellations. Relating them to international research and to various disciplines, it brings different ways of writing and text formats, images and debates together to give space to a versatility that can be used for writing, contemplating and experimenting. Issue No. 17, Psychological Devices, edited by Kathrin Peters and Stephan Trinkaus, examines the connections between media studies and theories of psychological issues. It explores the question whether psychoanalysis can be understood as a theory of mediality, as the interlocking of the inside and the outside, Eros and Thanatos, that which is symbolic and imaginary, presence and absence, individual and social issues. The contributions show: Wherever theories of psychological issues are not merely developed as a narratological or character analysis, something else emerges: a fundamentally relational perspective that makes not only relationships between humans but also their relationship to devices – and even the psyche itself as an device or machine – describable.