When we ask AI for advice, what we are offered is comparable to psychopathy: a performance of warm emotional intelligence without care or concern for our fate. As today’s guest Dr. Aaron Balick has written, “it may have a warm exterior, but its heart is code”.
Nevertheless, many of us now have a close relationship with AI, in which it draws on an extensive store of information about us to create feelings of intimacy and dependence. This has unknown and extensive consequences for the psyche. Wired as we are for relationships, we load AI with projections, which it then enthusiastically reinforces, exploiting the Achilles heel of our human need for attachment.
We discuss how AI fits into our understanding of object relations, the ways social media has groomed us to desire constant validation, how we could be using AI differently, why therapists must not ignore technological change, and much more.
Don’t forget to sign up for our free seminar on AI and the Psyche this Thursday October 8th 2026 at 2pm ET, which will be co-chaired by Lisa Marchiano and today’s podcast guest, Aaron Balick. Register here.
Our Guest
Aaron Balick, PhD, is a psychotherapist, author, and Honorary Senior Lecturer in the Department of Psychosocial and Psychoanalytic Studies at the University of Essex, and a founding member and former chair of The Relational School, UK. His book The Psychodynamics of Social Networking was among the first to apply psychoanalytic theory to social media, establishing him as an international voice on the psychodynamics of digital life. Committed to widening public understanding of psychology, he has contributed widely to broadcast and print media, including as resident psychotherapist on BBC Radio 1’s The Surgery and as a columnist for GQ. He now writes the Substack Depth Psychology in the Digital Age. An associate of The Balint Consultancy, he runs a private practice in London.
Here’s the Dream We Analyze
I was with the girl who broke my heart back in high school, it wasn’t her fault or mine. She was in a wheelchair in the dream, and we were together on a submarine. She asked me to push her over to the window so she could look outside. We were on the surface, we saw a train carrying some of my old friends. They were partying and having fun on it. The train was still, and half submerged. We smiled and waved at each other, but we couldn’t hear or speak through the glass. Then the submarine began descending deeper into the dark ocean water, searching and finding an old abandoned train covered in seaweed and algae resting silently on the sea floor. It was empty with no one aboard. A haunting feeling.
Resources from the Episode
- Aaron Balick, The Psychodynamics of Social Networking
- Aaron Balick’s Substack, Depth Psychology in the Digital Age
- Aaron Balick, ‘What happens when a therapist puts ChatGPT on the couch?’, GQ, May 2026.
- Sigmund Freud, (1917). Mourning and Melancholia. The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, Volume XIV (1914-1916): O. Read it online here.
- Marie Kondo, The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing
- Alessandra Lemma, Psychotechnical Becomings: Psychoanalysis, Identity, Desire, and Mourning in the Age of AI and Digital Mediation.
- Film: Her (A Spike Jonze love story).
- Film: It’s a Wonderful Life.
Related Episodes
If you enjoyed listening to this episode, you might also like:
- Why Does Social Media Weaponize Our Reactions? An Interview with Aaron Balick, Ph.D
- Jung vs. The Borg: Staying Human in the Age of AI with Glen Slater
- Psyche in the Age of AI
- At Home in Our Bodies: Incarnation & Individuation
