PanopticonThe word panopticon literally comes from Greek as “a space in which everything is visible.” At the end of the 18th century, Jeremy Bentham developed a model of an ideal prison. The idea is to build a circular building in which the prisoners are in fully visible cells, but cannot see the guards and do not know at what point they are being watched. Surveillance in such a prison would be carried out from a central tower, so that prisoners would have the feeling that they are under control at every moment. This system would make it possible to reduce the prison staff to a minimum, ideally to one person. Michel Foucault saw in the panopticon something more than an architectural plan. In his interpretation, the panopticon becomes a disciplinary principle that goes far beyond the round building. Through the concept of the panopticon, M. Foucault describes the psychological essence of the mechanism of power. He draws attention to the fact that the invisibility of power is a guarantee of order. The main purpose of the panopticon as a mechanism of power is to bring the prisoner into a state of conscious and constant visibility, which is to ensure the automatic functioning of power. The panopticon as a mechanism of power must be a machine that creates and maintains a relationship of power, regardless of the person who performs the function of administering power, in other words, prisoners should be drawn into a situation of power where they themselves are the bearers of this power. With modern information collection systems, we can say that we are all living in a panopticon. We do not see or feel the guards, but we still understand that we can be watched at almost any moment. And our whole life is in full view. Being in a prison of this type, the subject has a good basis for reflection. When a person thinks he is being watched, he is watching himself. Religion is similar to this type of prison. God is invisible, but knows everything and is always watching. It seems to me that this form is somewhat similar to what happens in psychoanalysis. When a person thinks that he is being watched (by a guard, by God, by a psychoanalyst), he begins to observe himself as if through the eyes of another, attributing to this other a certain assessment of himself, certain emotional reactions. The subject fantasizes about the observer, thus something similar to transference occurs in psychoanalysis. Do you think the panopticon can have an impact on the development of paranoia? How do you live in conditions where there are tracking devices everywhere (phones, intercoms, and cameras on every corner)? How do you feel about this??