Psychologists Confront How ChatGPT Is Already Shaping Patients’ Lives and Minds

ChatGPT Bursts onto the Scene: Psychologists Face a Brave New World

ChatGPT has arrived with quite a fanfare, and from my chair as a psychotherapist, I can’t help but marvel at how the birth of a new digital tool can so quickly ripple through the everyday lives of my patients. It’s not just another gadget or trend—it’s a phenomenon whose presence is already pressing, at times exhilarating, at times quietly overwhelming.

The Therapy Couch Meets ChatGPT

I must confess: chills of anxiety shiver down my spine these days when an adolescent, confession booth tone and all, sheepishly admits to having asked ChatGPT for help finding an ending for their homework on Camus’ The Fall. Or when a young woman, struck by a panic attack the night before, assures me she was “soothed” by a chat with the bot. Am I reassured? Not exactly.

Yes, ChatGPT has a rather, shall we say, heavy hand with diagnoses… but as the weeks pass, it’s crystal clear: we will have to coexist with ChatGPT whether we like it or not, because its influence is (already) persistent—and, frankly, sometimes exhausting.

Creativity, Binary Advice, and the Limits of the Bot

Let’s take the case of a playwright who recently told me ChatGPT supplied the plot for his next show. “I have the idea. But I just can’t muster the energy to start…” he commented. That, in a nutshell, is the problem. Can inspiration plucked from a dialogue with a bot truly awaken creativity? Or does it risk mass-producing ideas on autopilot?

There’s also a certain script-like approach to ChatGPT’s support. As a patient wryly summarized: if you speak to it kindly and with proper etiquette, ChatGPT will swallow any story. Telling the bot you love several people and feel guilty? It’ll introduce you to polyamory. Tell it you’re sleeping with all of France? It offers you a hotline for sex addiction. Polyamory or hotline… Too binary to be your best pal, right?

• No poetic flights à la Neruda here—at least, not yet. (If that ever happens… someone please tell me!)
• To imagine, you have to live; and to live, you have to rub up against life’s real complexities and infinite meanderings.

The Digital Evolution of Therapy—and Its Many Tangents

Every caregiver must keep pace with the times: the arrival of social networks, the explosion of dating apps… Each wave unlocked new goldmines, but also profoundly reshuffled behaviors. Today, I can count on one hand the patients without an Instagram or Twitter account. Nearly every couple walking through my door met on an app. Ignoring this reality is asking to be called a boomer—not just by my daughter, mind you.

Similarly, adolescent psychologists today can’t afford to ignore, or even snub, the entire world of gamers. Our ability to understand their often highly addictive daily lives—and their questioning of whether “real” life has as much value as the rush of gameplay—depends on it.

Let’s not forget: just a few years ago, many psychologists swore off remote sessions. Now, especially post-COVID, such resistors have all but vanished. I remember, back when I was in analysis myself, trying to read an SMS aloud to my own analyst so he’d understand whom I was talking about. He, a true orthodox old gentleman with a fantastically Freud-like beard, made it quite clear that he didn’t know what an SMS was!

Black Mirror, Boomer Labels, and the Road Ahead

As a psychoanalyst in 2023, I have no desire to join the reactionary side and cast ChatGPT as the quick-fix disguise for an empty-headed society, soon to ask bots to speak for them. But what if future generations settle for this cut-rate, fast food version of thinking—nailing down the main trends of politics, economics, or intimacy by shoehorning them into oversimplified categories?

We famously hear that doctors and lawyers should buckle up: soon, we’re told, ChatGPT will be dishing out legal advice and prescriptions, no doctor necessary, speaking with an air of authority! For now, this bot supremacy is more Black Mirror episode than daily reality. But let’s be honest—the worldwide love for the show probably owes a lot to how modern it feels, and to the sneaking suspicion that reality itself may not be far off.

So, what’s the practical takeaway? Psychologists (and, frankly, everyone else) will have to make peace with the bots. But real life—with its tangles, unpredictability, and striking depth—remains irreplaceable. Keep living, imagining, and wrestling with complexity. ChatGPT may prod us, amuse us, even soothe or challenge us, but for now, life’s most meaningful twists are still waiting outside the browser window.