Psychotherapy at a crossroads
I ran across an article last week that asked if mediums were going to replace therapists. Half horrified at the thought and half curious, I found myself pondering the future of psychotherapy. This is not a new practice for me, nor do I suspect for most therapists. The advent of AI has put therapists in a strange position.
I am still working on my neutral, unconditional positive regard face when clients tell me that they asked ChatGPT about their relationship problems, parenting concerns, or social anxiety, and then rave about the brilliant and concise responses that AI has crafted for them.
Not one to shy away from conflict, I typically remind them that these are the same questions we have been mulling over in therapy, and that the ChatGPT answer does not seem immensely dissimilar from the ideas we have been discussing in therapy together. Thus, unfolds the following dialogue:
Therapist: “What made you want to ask AI for answers to questions you already know?”
Client: “I was just so frustrated/uncomfortable/angry/confused in the moment and wanted to know for sure.”
Ah, alas, it seems that we have become a Sisyphus who has outsmarted his boulder. Why in the hell would we push the godforsaken thing up that cursed hill anymore if ChatGPT can help us escape the discomfort of the hill and the boulder in under 6 minutes, and for free?! We are liberated!
But are we?
I’ll refrain from riding my high horse into the dark night of the AI soul for now and veer back to the tenuous relationship of AI and psychotherapy. You would be hard pressed to meet a therapist that has not wondered about the future of their profession with the rapid onset of AI, and I am no exception.
The more I hear about people using AI as pseudo therapy, the more convinced I am that therapy will need to return to its mystical roots and reclaim the soul as the center of our work, lest therapists be usurped by a narcissistic, earth resource depleting, computer playing God.
I do not stand a chance against AI if clients want free, instant relief from their proverbial Sisyphusian boulders. I am neither a 24-hour crisis line nor an infinite information aggregator that can peddle relief from symptoms within an instant. I fear many colleagues are evading the writing on the wall.
Yet, I embrace a sense of excitement in the possibility of death to the profession as we know it today. Oh, to sink the “quick fix” ship in order to make room for something that AI cannot offer: Soul, Spirit, Ancestors, Remembering.
What if the birth of AI has come to remind therapy of where it came from and where it must return to?
Perhaps mediumship will replace therapy, but I think the more likely possibility is that the two will comingle into the type of therapy that Carl Jung always envisioned. Or they will remain separate but begin to rely on each other more.
Most therapists are already reading the psychic field with their clients, but we were told this is just a psychological function called intuition. As I have been practicing discerning psychic energy—my own energy and the energy of those in Spirit—I have learned that what I previously believed were random insights or downloads, are actually messages of love, support, and guidance from the Spirit realm. I delivered these messages in the past, not understanding their origins.
Sure, you can ask AI what it has to say about your existential dread, but it will never hit quite as hard as the loving message from your ancestors and guides in the Spirit World. Ever. Nor will it offer you the same energetic, spiritual expansion and deep sense of connection with the universe. It is what Spirit hopes we will go in search of and find.
While AI tackles discomfort in a moment, spiritually focused therapy or mediumship tackles your sense of interconnectedness with your world and the possibility that none of this is an accident, and you are here—experiencing all of those damn boulders—for a stunningly beautiful reason. One that AI cannot offer you.
My therapy practice has begun a massive transformation as I have welcomed in the transcendent third, which I call Spirit, in my own work, and referred clients to a local trusted medium. I have also started sitting in a brief meditation before each session, opening the circle to Spirit, who has always guided my work whether I knew it or not.
Sometimes I have no direct messages, just a sense of care and love. I am, after all, spending an hour with a soul that has a multitude of ancestors and guides that have the upper hand when it comes to their care. The humbleness as a therapist that I have long intuited makes infinitely more sense to me now that I see myself as a very small part of the team that travels with each soul on its journey.
Sometimes an ancestor will swing by with a quick message, or a guide will convey an image that I get to share. My personal favorite is when Spirit lets me and my client know its feelings by using the ballons, thumbs up, and confetti functions in a Google Meet session with no prompting. Spirit is truly a riot.
These days I worry less about the future of my work because I do less of what ChatGPT can probably do better than me anyway, and more of the mystical work that I have been dancing around for years. I also dream of an academic setting where I can teach these things to future and existing therapists freely.
If fellow therapists, clients, or others worry they do not have these abilities, I assure you that literally anyone can learn to connect with Spirit. This is not a gene you have to possess; it is an inborn quality that our ancestors knew forwards and backwards. And it is waiting for you to remember. Stay tuned.