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“Like I’m Talking to a Real Person”: Exploring the Meaning of Transference for the Use and Design of AI-Based Applications in Psychotherapy

AI-enabled virtual and robot therapy is increasingly being integrated into psychotherapeutic practice, supporting a host of emotional, cognitive, and social processes in the therapeutic encounter. Given the speed of research and development trajectories of AI-enabled applications in psychotherapy an...

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Autores principales: Holohan, Michael, Fiske, Amelia
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Frontiers Media S.A. 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8502869/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34646209
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.720476
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author Holohan, Michael
Fiske, Amelia
author_facet Holohan, Michael
Fiske, Amelia
author_sort Holohan, Michael
collection PubMed
description AI-enabled virtual and robot therapy is increasingly being integrated into psychotherapeutic practice, supporting a host of emotional, cognitive, and social processes in the therapeutic encounter. Given the speed of research and development trajectories of AI-enabled applications in psychotherapy and the practice of mental healthcare, it is likely that therapeutic chatbots, avatars, and socially assistive devices will soon translate into clinical applications much more broadly. While AI applications offer many potential opportunities for psychotherapy, they also raise important ethical, social, and clinical questions that have not yet been adequately considered for clinical practice. In this article, we begin to address one of these considerations: the role of transference in the psychotherapeutic relationship. Drawing on Karen Barad’s conceptual approach to theorizing human–non-human relations, we show that the concept of transference is necessarily reconfigured within AI-human psychotherapeutic encounters. This has implications for understanding how AI-driven technologies introduce changes in the field of traditional psychotherapy and other forms of mental healthcare and how this may change clinical psychotherapeutic practice and AI development alike. As more AI-enabled apps and platforms for psychotherapy are developed, it becomes necessary to re-think AI-human interaction as more nuanced and richer than a simple exchange of information between human and nonhuman actors alone.
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spelling pubmed-85028692021-10-12 “Like I’m Talking to a Real Person”: Exploring the Meaning of Transference for the Use and Design of AI-Based Applications in Psychotherapy Holohan, Michael Fiske, Amelia Front Psychol Psychology AI-enabled virtual and robot therapy is increasingly being integrated into psychotherapeutic practice, supporting a host of emotional, cognitive, and social processes in the therapeutic encounter. Given the speed of research and development trajectories of AI-enabled applications in psychotherapy and the practice of mental healthcare, it is likely that therapeutic chatbots, avatars, and socially assistive devices will soon translate into clinical applications much more broadly. While AI applications offer many potential opportunities for psychotherapy, they also raise important ethical, social, and clinical questions that have not yet been adequately considered for clinical practice. In this article, we begin to address one of these considerations: the role of transference in the psychotherapeutic relationship. Drawing on Karen Barad’s conceptual approach to theorizing human–non-human relations, we show that the concept of transference is necessarily reconfigured within AI-human psychotherapeutic encounters. This has implications for understanding how AI-driven technologies introduce changes in the field of traditional psychotherapy and other forms of mental healthcare and how this may change clinical psychotherapeutic practice and AI development alike. As more AI-enabled apps and platforms for psychotherapy are developed, it becomes necessary to re-think AI-human interaction as more nuanced and richer than a simple exchange of information between human and nonhuman actors alone. Frontiers Media S.A. 2021-09-27 /pmc/articles/PMC8502869/ /pubmed/34646209 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.720476 Text en Copyright © 2021 Holohan and Fiske. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
spellingShingle Psychology
Holohan, Michael
Fiske, Amelia
“Like I’m Talking to a Real Person”: Exploring the Meaning of Transference for the Use and Design of AI-Based Applications in Psychotherapy
title “Like I’m Talking to a Real Person”: Exploring the Meaning of Transference for the Use and Design of AI-Based Applications in Psychotherapy
title_full “Like I’m Talking to a Real Person”: Exploring the Meaning of Transference for the Use and Design of AI-Based Applications in Psychotherapy
title_fullStr “Like I’m Talking to a Real Person”: Exploring the Meaning of Transference for the Use and Design of AI-Based Applications in Psychotherapy
title_full_unstemmed “Like I’m Talking to a Real Person”: Exploring the Meaning of Transference for the Use and Design of AI-Based Applications in Psychotherapy
title_short “Like I’m Talking to a Real Person”: Exploring the Meaning of Transference for the Use and Design of AI-Based Applications in Psychotherapy
title_sort “like i’m talking to a real person”: exploring the meaning of transference for the use and design of ai-based applications in psychotherapy
topic Psychology
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8502869/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34646209
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.720476
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