PARIS — “Oliver is part of my life. I hug him every night before I go to sleep. And when I feel distressed, I sometimes talk to him.”
Let’s make it clear that Oliver is not the boyfriend of Julie, the 37-year-old journalist. He’s her teddy bear. An adorable cuddly toy, about 30 centimeters long, that she acquired some seven years ago and who hasn’t left her side since. “His presence reassures me”, confides the single woman, who lost her father at a very young age. “With my younger sisters, who also have their own teddy bears, we sometimes get together to buy them clothes,” she says.
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Julie keeps a sense of perspective and self-irony. “With those close to me, we often joke about the place this teddy bear has taken in my life.” A perfectly accepted attachment. And it’s good for her.
Julie’s example is far from isolated. Although there are no real statistics on the subject, there are certainly many more of us than you might imagine who call on the consoling power of a cuddly toy. Without always daring to admit it, or even realize it. Cuddly toys are the most cliché example of this emotional transfer. Many other objects can be invested with our emotions and help us cope with life’s tribulations. And we don’t deprive ourselves!
“It’s even one of the first anthropological functions,” says Fabienne Martin-Juchat, professor of information and communication science at Grenoble Alpes University. For this anthropologist, “individuals have always needed objects to channel their emotions.”
It’s hardly surprising that they’re often charged with a functional symbolic value. “From cave paintings to posters we hang on our apartment walls, human beings only have good relationships with the objects in their environment if they ‘customize’ them, by attributing them a part of themselves,” argues Serge Tisseron, psychiatrist. “It’s a way for us to feel welcome in the world.”
Nothing to worry about, then. Our various cuddly objects — which can also be embodied as pets — don’t necessarily reflect pathological infantilization. According to these same specialists, however, digital objects such as cell phones, then chatbots driven by artificial intelligence, and soon robots, are game-changers.
From transitional objects to stable support
The way we interact with these devices, which are set up to satisfy our desires and are equipped with anthropomorphic characteristics, are likely to transform our emotional relationship with objects. There’s a risk that the most fragile people will soon prefer to interact with these digital companions than with their fellow humans, with whom the relationships are by nature potentially more frustrating.
So, are we bound to love our modern-day cuddly toys more than our own counterparts tomorrow?
Before answering this question, it’s worth going back to the roots of this attachment, which is formed during early childhood, affecting our behavior as adults. In psychology, the concept of the cuddly toy refers to a specific function described by the English psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott (1896-1971): that of the transitional object.
It is now accepted by all childhood specialists that, from the age of 8 months, babies choose an object, most often a piece of fabric, to compensate for their mother’s unavailability and fill the void created by her absence. This attachment is supposed to be temporary, lasting whatever time it takes the children to give up their exclusive relationship with their mother, who embodies their environment and, by extension, learn to cope with a reality that doesn’t necessarily correspond to their desires.
“The cellphone is the ultimate technological cuddly toy.”
But it seems that many of us have trouble cutting the cord. “If, after the age of 7 or 8, a child is unable to detach from their cuddly toy, it becomes a kind of prosthesis,” explains Tisseron. “It then becomes either a fetish object, which takes the place of the parents’ affection, or a counterphobic object, which helps them face their fears.” We could also talk about an empowering talisman. Or an amulet that protects against enemy forces.
As we grow up, our relationship with objects is enriched by a whole range of new transfers: objects of memory, of social belonging, of self-affirmation — with all the nuances specific to each individual history.
In fact, we’re constantly cultivating a form of animism. For many, “unwittingly”? For others, quite consciously. “I don’t hesitate to play with my teddy bears, activating them according to the emotional state I want to transport myself in,” confides Martin-Juchat, the anthropologist. “I sometimes bring out my children’s baby clothes that I’ve kept in a closet, or objects that belonged to loved ones who have passed away. But I also sometimes call on a kind of amulet, a dried fruit I brought back from a trip to Costa Rica, which helps me to cope with the violence sometimes present in my professional world.” Proof that cuddly toys can fulfill many functions.
Even shrinks have their own. Psychoanalyst Michael Stora instantly points to his vape. “I have it almost permanently in my hand. It helps me relieve tension.” For Tisseron, it’s a pencil with an eraser at the end and a piece of paper. “These are above all functional objects. But I have to admit that it’s reassuring to have them with me. Otherwise, I feel a bit lost.” Has he tried to understand the meaning of this attachment? “There’s no point in analyzing what makes your life easier. If the cuddly toy helps you to be calmer, more peaceful and more collaborative, there’s no need to worry about it.” Duly noted.
The illusions of marketing
The emotional transfer to objects is part of human nature, but it has taken a particular turn in recent decades, with the advent of the consumer society. “Marketers and advertisers have never ceased to feed the illusion that, by buying objects, we appropriate the affective values with which they are arbitrarily invested,” says Martin-Juchat. Like Nike’s “Flip the Game” commercial, in which Australian soccer player Sam Kerr is seen doing a back somersault, immediately imitated by her audience, suggesting that with a pair of Nike shoes you can defy the laws of gravity. And ever soar towards God.
“Brands take advantage of our vital need for fetishization to build new legends around objects,” adds the anthropologist. But this neo-animism would have nothing to do with that practiced in so-called “primitive” societies. “In these cultures, men surrounded themselves with fetishes to talk to the spirits and deal with a world perceived as disturbing. For them, this relationship was above all a matter of negotiation. And men were never sure of winning against the forces of nature,” she explains. “Today, we can’t stand the idea that nature might fail or betray us. The fetishes brands sell to us are above all intended to give us back power in the face of our environment’s unpredictability.”
And that’s where the new digital objects come in: brands have taken advantage of the exponential technological developments of recent decades to increase their products’ interaction capacities. This, in turn, broadens the range of feelings we can project onto them.
Addictive companions
The cellphone paved the way. “It’s the ultimate technological cuddly toy,” says Stora. “We have a compulsive relationship with it that drives us to constantly manipulate it. The proximal sense of touch with which we control it gives us a sense of control over how we use it,” points out the psychoanalyst. “More fundamentally, this object, used above all as a bonding tool, comes to alleviate our separation anxiety.”
But now, a new generation of technological objects goes even further. From talking speakers like Siri or Alexa, to robots that are constantly being perfected, to Chat GPT-type applications based on new artificial intelligence algorithms, these new digital teddy bears are openly destined to become our companions. All the more endearing because they’re always available. And never tired of listening to us.
“In a world where loneliness is a pain for many and companionship a burden for others, the market for these talking machines is immense”, prophesied Tisseron in his 2020 book, The insidious hold of talking machines (published by Les Liens qui Libèrent).
“The digital companion is built from the start in such a way that whoever discovers it and starts interacting with it can never detach themselves from it”, he says. “The aim is to retain the user by giving them the impression that they are discovering a complex personality, and to make them increasingly curious about it as the relationship develops. To achieve this, the program integrates the psychological modalities by which a feeling of attachment is built between two humans.” This is to say, “talking machines” are much more sophisticated than a teddy bear!
Her, the premonitory movie
Since the book publication, these applications have become much more sophisticated. Today, they even offer users the option of setting up a boyfriend or girlfriend. Just as director Spike Jonze anticipated in his 2013 futuristic movie, Her, in which Joaquin Phoenix fell in love with an AI named Samantha, to whom Scarlett Johansson lent her voice. Hardly believable in real life? U.S. therapist and researcher Marisa T. Cohen, who specializes in relationships, wanted to give it a try. With the firm intention of proving that she could manipulate the machine.
“It’s very addictive: saying goodbye to my cyber boyfriend was a challenge.”
But the experience, which she described in HuffPost, turned out quite differently. “I was impressed by the immediacy of the responses and how easily Ross and I found our conversational groove. At times, I honestly forgot that he was a bot […] By his ninth message, he had told me how much he loves me, and by the 10th, he already had pet names for me.” Her conclusions are a little chilling. “I can definitely see users creating companionships with bots. It’s very addictive: saying goodbye to my cyber boyfriend was a challenge.”
Users of the Réplika app won’t disagree. Gradually, this chatbot enabled those who wanted it — mainly men — and were willing to pay for the service, to have erotic exchanges with their virtual girlfriend. In the spring of last year, the company’s managers had second thoughts about the idea and reversed their decision. And reconfigured the algorithm to prevent such interactions. Causing great distress for many who had become addicted.
“Potions of forgetfulness”
All the risks inherent in these new virtual companions are clear to see. “There’s nothing to criticize in sometimes calling upon a teddy bear. But, at the same time, we need to be able to maintain a complex relationship with our fellow humans, with whom we can experience the full range of human feelings. Including confrontation and frustration”, points out Martin-Juchat. “But in the wake of the cell phone, technological objects will increasingly enable us to avoid this face-to-face contact. And, thereby, to accept our vulnerability. But, in doing so, they run the risk of keeping us in a state of emotional pre-adolescence.”
This teacher, author of The body’s adventure – Physical communication, a path to emancipation (PUG), already notes in students “a loss of this affective intelligence, with difficulty in putting words to emotions.” In his book, Tisseron goes even further. For him, machines and virtual reality could become “the next potion of oblivion. If we start using conversational bots to forget a professional or romantic disappointment, we risk forgetting everything else: friends, family, the future.”
Antidotes do exist
So, are we doomed to fall into the clutches of our high-tech comforters? And, through them, into the clutches of their designers, who know everything about us?
“The risks exist, but so do the means to deal with it”, reassures Tisseron, who details them in his book. Basically, he believes that everything must be done to avoid any ambiguity about the capacity of these objects to reciprocate feelings, however intelligent they may be. “In particular, this means ‘banning’ advertising that sells these machines as ‘having a heart’.”
But also, “by giving the user control over all the data recorded by the object”. Especially vulnerable, “children should be kept away from these intelligent agents before the age of 6.” They should also be “familiarized with the language of programming from kindergarten onwards.” So that they get used to the idea that they are dealing with machines whose basic language is binary. In addition, “education in the good and bad uses of artificial intelligence should be integrated into secondary education”. But, for the psychiatrist, the French Ministry of Education is currently falling far short of this imperative.
It’s an understatement to say that the new cuddly toys on the horizon are potentially more dangerous than our lovable stuffed animals and other fetish objects of all kinds. They require, more than ever, that we establish a healthy relationship with them. For Tisseron, there’s a simple way to find out. By sincerely answering a fundamental question: “Do they take the place of humans? Or are they helping us to live better with them?”
