Artifical Psychotherapy: The Intrusion of AI Into Mental Healing
In this article, I am going to try to dispassionately examine the use of AI as a psychotherapist for individuals suffering from mental illness. Although the reader may intuit from the title of this post that I am against this “intrusion” of technology into the realm of interpersonal healing. Like the experience of being in love, mental healing can only take place in an emotionally intimate interpersonal relationship. This is not to say, superficial learning and the awareness of new ideas can’t take place when talking to an AI program or robotic therapist. For starters, a “patient” of the artificial psychotherapist would have to “assume” or “pretend” that he or she is speaking with a sentient human being. But already we are starting off on the wrong foot. There is more than enough to do in beginning a psychotherapy without having to burden the patient with pretense.
From there, we can assume that a patient will be hesitant, consciously or unconsciously, to “transfer” what is disturbing in their experience into the artificial psychotherapy relationship. Let’s face it, our patients are not ignorant. They know they are talking with an artifical entity that is “mimicking” a psychotherapist. This will inevitably limit the amount and nature of the disturbance that is revealed and/or re-enacted in the psychotherapy. Furthermore, the artificial psychotherapist has no emotional responses to speak of, only mechanical-technical ones. So much of the wisdom and knowledge that is transacted in a psychotherapeutic relationship is generated from the shared emotions taking place in the moment to moment interactions of treatment. I understand my patients deeply when what they are struggling with conveys a feeling or emotion in me. That feeling or emotion is used to grasp the emotional pain my patient is dealing with and the defenses they are trying to use to cope with it. This type of experience would simply not be possible when the psychotherapist is artificial.
I’ve learned in my career as a clinical psychologist and interpersonal psychoanalyst, that the deepest and most intimate experience I can have with a patient occurs when I am able to appreciate a particular patient’s unique individuality. This aspect of the human self is usually unconscious in the beginning of treatment. After a developed trust and freedom of expression, unique individuality can become more conscious in the psychotherapeutic relationship. The problem for the artificial psychotherapist is, this deep therapeutic development requires experiences of mutuality. Two people working through the defensiveness that limits the sharing of their unique individualities in each other’s presence. Unique individuality is simply not programmable. Each individual human being possesses this deepest level of being whether they become conscious of it or not in the course of their lifetimes. This is simply not an experience a patient would be able to have with a machine.
I sincerely hope that the limitations of artificial therapeutics results in a clear understanding of what a machine is and is not able to do for a person struggling with mental illness. The frustration a patient will experience when unrealistic expectations are disappointed will only make the patient’s psychological condition worse. We have a relatively obscure word for the negative complications a doctor or psychotherapist introduces in the treatment of a patient that makes his or her condition worse: iatrogenic. We are going to need a new word that will describe the antitherapeutic effects of needing a human psychotherapist and having to settle for an artifical one. For now, let’s understand the dangers of human mimicry when psychological sufferring is involved.
I recently heard on the news about an adolescent who used an AI counselling program to cyrstalize his suicidal intention, utilize the AI therapist to write his suicide note, and then took his own life. Case in point.
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Dr. Thomas Jordan, clinical psychologist, interpersonal psychoanalyst, author of Learn to Love: Guide to Healing Your Disappointing Love Life. Contact: 212-875-0154 or drtomjordan@lovelifelearningcenter.com for inquiries. Love Life Telehealth Consultations available by request.
