ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½

Supposing you were looking for a therapist to talk through a problem in your life and you were fortunate enough to find one who affirmed and encouraged you, asked all the right questions and never ever made you feel judged. That is the experience some have had with AI therapy, the mental health support powered by Artificial Intelligence. This is not new, years ago there was a programme called Eliza, which you had to type in and it came back with, ‘Tell me more’, and ‘How did that feel’ and being at the other end of it you certainly felt affirmed as you were echoed back to yourself.

From Freud onwards some therapists and analysts have favoured a blank wall approach. The client talking, the analyst listening. The client on the couch, the therapist not making eye contact. But while this cost an awful lot, A1 therapy is free. And if you are the kind of person who always feels judged by others I can see that an impersonal presence could be liberating. Unless of course you confess a desire to do harm to yourself – one recent programme withdrew an update which had cheerfully endorsed a patient’s desire to stop taking her medication

Having a human relationship is always risky, but having a non-human relationship does not come without risk. One of the most challenging things said by Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount was, ‘Do not judge, so that you may not be judged’. He then expanded this by explaining that when we judge other people we make ourselves vulnerable to being judged back by the same standard. In psychological language, we project our fears and fantasies and desires on to others and they reciprocate. So anyone training as a therapist needs to be aware of their personal prejudices and discount them as far as possible. The AI counsellor of course, not being human, has no prejudices unless they are programmed in. That could be done of course. In theory you could train the algorithm in ‘client-centred therapy’, or ‘Catholic moral teaching’ or ‘best-friend over a drink at the pub’.

What this shows us is that as humans we crave human connection and we also crave unconditional acceptance. The problem is that we can’t easily have both at the same time. Jesus having told us not to judge, actually made many judgements. His insight into human heart got him into trouble, especially when he condemned the religious leaders of his day for their hypocrisy. It seems to me that there is no risk free therapy, whether from other people or from machines. We carry our histories with us, the best we can hope for is to be, as Jesus put it, aware of the log in our eye before we attempt to remove the speck in our neighbours.

Show less