The Empty Promise of Therapy Without a Therapist
The author, a psychoanalyst, argues that AI-driven mental health services lack the essential human capacity for mutual feeling and relational healing. The piece warns that these tools may offer an 'empty promise' by replacing the nuanced, emotional connection of traditional therapy with algorithmic interaction.
Why it matters
As AI integration into healthcare grows, this perspective raises ethical and clinical questions about the limitations of technology in treating human emotional distress.
What happens when our therapists are no longer able to feel?
Illustration by Olga Aleksandrova September 17, 2026, 7 AM ET Share Save Therapy can involve a lot of words, but it’s often the pauses that matter most. If you transcribed a session, the pauses would look like nothing: beats of silence, extra breaths, slowing down. But these can represent the crux of the practice: entry points into feeling. My job as a psychoanalyst is to listen as much to silence as to words, to be present with the patient while they’re quiet—to stay with them as they allow their feelings to emerge.
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