Instead of
thinking that personality is constructed in layers with the environment "out
there" somewhere, we can conceptualize it as an intrapsyhic field containing
clusters or constellations of emotion, memory, and thinking that are
interconnected with certain environments. Some constellations overlap, others
are more dissociated from each other, with environmental variables influencing
those levels of integration and dissociation.

Life in cyberspace tends to disrupt these factors that support
self-boundary. The physical body and its five senses no longer play as
crucial a role as in face-to-face ...

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Instead of
thinking that personality is constructed in layers with the environment "out
there" somewhere, we can conceptualize it as an intrapsyhic field containing
clusters or constellations of emotion, memory, and thinking that are
interconnected with certain environments. Some constellations overlap, others
are more dissociated from each other, with environmental variables influencing
those levels of integration and dissociation.

Life in cyberspace tends to disrupt these factors that support
self-boundary. The physical body and its five senses no longer play as
crucial a role as in face-to-face relationships. What others know or
don't know about me is not always clear. The feeling of a linear past,
present, and future becomes more obscure as we move back and forth
through synchronous and asynchronous communication. As a result, this
altered state of consciousness in cyberspace tends to shift or
destabilize self-boundary. The distinction between inner-me and
outer-other is not as clear. The person shifts to what psychoanalytic
theory calls "primary process thinking" in which boundaries between
self and other representations become more diffuse, and thinking
becomes more subjective and emotion-centered. Within the transitional
space of online communication, the psyches of self and other feel like
they might be overlapping. We allow the hidden self to surface because
we no longer experience it as a purely inner self; but at the same time
we also sense, sometimes vaguely and sometimes distinctly, the
intrusion of an unknown other into our private world, which results in
suspicion, anxiety, and the need to defend our exposed and vulnerable
intrapsychic territory.