Psychoanalytic inquiry invites you to connections and conversation, a free Psychoanalytic zoom meeting open to all:

Why Love Matters: Psychoanalysis, AI-Intimacies, and Techno-Subjunctivity — Todd Essig, Ph.D.
September 19 @ 9:00 am - 10:30 am PT
Details here

If AI’s transformation of self-experience, intimate life, and professional identity does not make you at least a little anxious, you are not paying attention. But anxiety need not lead to denial, panic, or retreat. This presentation argues that hope fueled by realistic AI-anxiety can become the basis for active psychoanalytic engagement with AI. Focusing on the intimate experiences people have with chatbots, this talk considers relational AI as a clinical and cultural pharmakon: both remedy and poison. These systems can help regulate affect, reduce loneliness, and scaffold reflection. They can also foster delusion, dependency, relational off-loading, isolation, and a flattening of inner life. With therapy-bots on the near horizon the challenge for psychoanalytic care is not whether emerging AIs will replicate much of what therapists do. They will. But replication does not mean replacement. What remains irreducibly human is not our technique but the meaning-making context of actual human-provided care, even love. Concepts of techno-subjunctivity and AI-fitness are introduced as ways to understand this new relational territory. These concepts help us, our students, and our patients navigate the emerging AI-age with hope and without surrendering the value of human love, care, and subjectivity.
Todd Essig, Ph.D. is Faculty and Training and Supervising Psychoanalyst at the William Alanson White Institute, Faculty at the NYU Postdoctoral Program in Psychoanalysis, and inaugural member of the Psychotherapy Action Network (PsiAN) Advisory Board. Well-known for being a pioneer in the creative uses of mental health technologies he publishes, lectures, and consults internationally at the intersections of psychoanalysis and technology. He founded and currently chairs the American Psychoanalytic Association (APsA) Presidential Commission on Artificial Intelligence (CAI) and serves on the International Psychoanalytical Association’s (IPA) AI subcommittee. Previously, he co-authored the IPA Task Force report on telesessions and psychoanalytic education and during the pandemic he co-chaired APsA’s Covid-19 Advisory Team. For 10 years, until the pandemic hit, he wrote “Managing Mental Wealth” for Forbes. Dr. Essig maintains a private practice in New York where he treats individuals and couples.

Please take a look at the new Psychoanalytic Inquiry website for coming up events and to watch recordings of past ones. 

To Join the Zoom Meeting for Connections and Conversation: 
https://us06web.zoom.us/j/85352318433?pwd=APEXlQEii9KEANd4icbyTv3TlVDh6i.1

Meeting ID: 853 5231 8433
Passcode: 215649

Connections and Conversation is a free monthly Zoom meeting, cultivating creativity and freedom of thought and feeling. We invite you to engage with our presenters and community as they share their interests and passions in conversation on current topics in psychoanalysis.