CAN CHATBOTS PRACTICE ANALYSIS? PSYCHOANALYSIS, TECHNIQUE, AND SUBJECTIVITY IN THE AGE OF AI

Abstract

The advancement of conversational artificial intelligences has introduced an unprecedented scenario: increasing numbers of people are turning to chatbots to talk about their distress and seek immediate answers. This paper revisits Freud’s question
of whether laypersons could practice analysis in order to ask whether chatbots might occupy that position. The article uses this question as a way of rethinking what defines psychoanalytic practice. Drawing on contributions from Freud, Foucault, and
Habermas, it examines the differences between an instrumental rationality oriented toward producing answers and the analytic experience as an intersubjective space in which speech, listening, and emptiness make it possible for something of the subject
to emerge.