BrightonPsych

Tweets by Mark Vahrmeyer | UKCP Psychoanalytical Psychotherapist | Views my own | Co-owner of Brighton and Hove Psychotherapy in #Brighton and #Lewes, UK

[BrightonPsych @BrightonPsych]

Why AI “therapy” between sessions may feel helpful - but is quietly undermining real psychotherapy and change. 🧵

I am seeing more and more articles about how AI can be used to support patients between sessions. This is why this is a bad idea:

[BrightonPsych @BrightonPsych]

The modern self is encouraged to optimise everything except the one thing that matters most: the capacity to bear reality.

[BrightonPsych @BrightonPsych]

@Ravankavosh Quote possibly. Freud borrowed from the Ancient Greeks so why not from the Arabs.

[BrightonPsych @BrightonPsych]

‘No mortal can keep a secret. If his lips are silent, he chatters with his fingertips.’ - Freud

[BrightonPsych @BrightonPsych]

What could possibly ever go wrong? Strangers marrying as part of some reality TV show. Peak decadence. https://t.co/Sk2qnD704T

[Jonathan Shedler @JonathanShedler]

All psychological defenses are efforts to live in fantasy rather than the world. Defenses distort reality. The greater the distortion, the higher the cost.

AI companions are may be new. But the wish to live in fantasy is as old as humankind.

[BrightonPsych @BrightonPsych]

@Ravankavosh The comment from the patient may also be saying something about their fear of dependency on the analyst. Important to work with.

[BrightonPsych @BrightonPsych]

@erby1kabogey Object relations theory, in my view the British school, Klein, Winnicott, etc.

[BrightonPsych @BrightonPsych]

Both shows capture the constant reversal of roles that characterises sadomasochistic dynamics: power and control. The pursuer becomes dependent, the victim manipulates, the apparently powerless partner gains control whilst the controlling partner psychologically collapses.

[BrightonPsych @BrightonPsych]

What makes both #BabyReindeer and #HalfMan so unsettling is that they expose something many intuitively recognise: that some relationships survive not despite the suffering they create, but because the suffering itself becomes central to holding the relationship together.

[BrightonPsych @BrightonPsych]

Psychoanalysis understands that human beings do not necessarily seek happiness as much as familiarity. The psyche repeatedly returns to emotional worlds resembling early attachment experiences, even when painful, because familiarity creates a sense of psychic continuity.

[BrightonPsych @BrightonPsych]

Why don't individuals in these relationships simply leave? Pathological attachment is not governed primarily by rationality. For many people, particularly those with early attachment trauma, familiar suffering feels psychologically safer than separation or emptiness.

[BrightonPsych @BrightonPsych]

What both #BabyReindeer and #HalfMan understand so well is that the suffering is not incidental to the attachment is the attachment itself. The humiliation, rejection, desperation and conflict are not by-products of the relationship but the basis of the relationship.

[BrightonPsych @BrightonPsych]

The BBC’s #HalfMan is a masterclass in sadomasochistic relationships. Like #BabyReindeer, it portrays a form of attachment in which neither person can truly leave because the suffering itself has become central to maintaining the emotional bond. 🧵

[BrightonPsych @BrightonPsych]

The sadist needs somebody onto whom control, humiliation and omnipotence can be projected; the masochist needs somebody through whom suffering, longing and dependency can be organised. What develops is an emotional system that both parties become trapped inside.

[BrightonPsych @BrightonPsych]

Sadomasochistic relationships are often misunderstood - people imagine a simple dynamic involving a cruel sadist dominating an innocent masochist. Clinically the reality is far more complex and disturbing: The sadist needs the masochist as much as the masochist needs the sadist.

[Jonathan Shedler @JonathanShedler]

The fundamental insight of psychoanalysis is that the mind is divided against itself.

We are of many minds. We have conflicting and contradictory motives. That was Freud, circa 1900. No living person originated this insight. It does not belong to any therapy "brand."

Generations of psychotherapists have refined this understanding and developed ways of applying it in psychotherapy to help patients become more self-aware and whole.

It is not proprietary knowledge, you don’t need to become a devotee of a therapy acronym, and you don’t need a certification from a for-profit business.

This insight goes back to the early 1900s and is the starting point of all psychotherapy approaches that work toward greater self-awareness and wholeness.

[BrightonPsych @BrightonPsych]

Freud once said "Love and work... that's all there is," But, when our identity becomes fused with work, that can leave us vulnerable to collapse when our external work changes. Always a pleasure to contribute to the Ask Annalisa column:
https://t.co/u1K7lGXmDs

[BrightonPsych @BrightonPsych]

@filipcodes If you truly believe any AI system has emotions and can attune rather than simulate, that's a delusion in the clinical sense.

[BrightonPsych @BrightonPsych]

The issue with articles like this is that the meaning and definition of psychotherapy is utterly lost. You cannot get 'therapy' from AI. You can get other things, but not therapy, as therapy IS the relationship. https://t.co/ZLgFz9Nd6C

[BrightonPsych @BrightonPsych]

@filipcodes Because a relationship is between two or more PEOPLE. Humans can attune and thus have emotions.