25th February 2025
Have you come across AI as it impacts on Cognitive Analytic Therapy? What reciprocal roles do we have with this new increasingly predominant technology? A recent meeting of the TASTT Special Interest Group dedicated an hour to discussion around this topic and those present traversed a number of positions.
Some of us recognised the ease with which our lives are assisted and our time saved, by automated feeds of things of interest to us. Some were curious about what exactly it might be like to have attention from an AI-powered robot in our later years and whether this might stem loneliness in a way for which we'll feel grateful and soothed. Some of us recounted undergraduate tales from early studies finding that it was difficult to discern between empathic responses generated by human and AI therapists. Friends and family had shared accounts of how spookily helpful a chatbot could be.
This was not to diminish the concern, wariness and for some of us, abject horror, at the thought of how words and patterns of behaviour are already being used to feed large datasets and fuel generative AI, with many implications for our day to day lives and the political environments around us.
As therapists, particularly CAT therapists, we know that meaning is the relational matter we work with in therapy, supervision and other applications of CAT. We were aware that AI can create and learn from patterns however we did not think it could derive meaning and would still (always?) require human validation and verification of output in order to ensure meaning was accommodated. AI will never experience countertransference (will it?)
What might the specific issues be for CAT practice? Where does ACAT sit with AI in psychotherapy, in learning, research and academia, in literature, and in public information about CAT? If AI responses are constructed by amalgamating and repeating common responses, what will this mean for creativity, originality or even a paradoxical stance? In time, will this level of predictability soon become uninformative and stultifying? In this complex political and historical period might we, as a CAT community, be opting out of dialogue with history if we don't engage constructively with AI? Reflecting on our relationship with technology might help bring our attention back to where Anthony Ryle felt that psychotherapy belongs.
Finally, what are the ethical issues we need to consider in relation to confidentiality and consent? AI is now a standing item within ACAT's Ethics Committee, so if as members you want to raise ethical concerns for the Committee's attention, you can do so.
If you have any thoughts, opinions or would like to take part in further consideration of these issues, get in touch with the TASTT SIG. A keen trainee practitioner or psychotherapist may well already be thinking about the topic as part of their written assignment. If you have something to contribute or a need for learning around this area, stay in dialogue.
The TASTT SIG currently meets quarterly and you can find out more information at its section on this listing of special interest groups.