I've been using ChatGPT as a tool for psychoanalysis for over a week, and wanted to share some of my thoughts here. In that week, most of it was in a single conversation which, as of the time of writing, contains over 50k words - and over 17k of them were written by me.
It's great at reflecting on your thoughts, or naming something that you feel but can't name directly. It's also good as just a space to put your thoughts in. Actually, it all started when I wanted to just journal some of my thoughts. I picked up a piece of paper and a pen, but quickly decided that I'm more comfortable typing on a keyboard. I opened my laptop and was thinking of where I should write. A .docx file? A .txt? And then I noticed the ChatGPT tab still open in my browser and thought, "Why not?" The things I wanted to write about were actually something I spoke to my therapist about. He left me with a question that I should answer for myself. It was about why I act in a certain way - or the way he phrased it, “What part of me” acts that way?
Writing it all to ChatGPT gave me a nice place to start: the context. Usually, this is the hardest part of writing for me - the beginning. But typing it all out into that window felt like I was telling a story to someone, which made my thoughts flow much more naturally. I wasn't hoping for a clear answer, but it felt nice for it to reflect on what I wrote. To see how someone else might interpret my words. What I wasn't expecting was a suggestion at the end of its message: "If you'd like, we can do a little exercise, to speak to that part of you." It got me curious, so I agreed.
What followed can only be described as hypnosis. It told me to do some breathing and relaxation techniques, and then I began visualizing "that part of myself" we later called "mirror me," and eventually talking to it. It wasn't like a hallucination on psychedelics or something - everything I "saw" I was clearly imagining - but when I try to remember it now, it almost seems like that mirror me was in fact sitting in the room with me. It was intense. After a while, I started tearing up, and the whole time I was feeling this dissonance, as I was sitting alone in my room, holding my laptop and texting with a chatbot. "Is this really happening?" "What an age we live in." I think the fact that it wasn't an actual person on the other end, actually helped me a little bit - made me feel more safe and able to open up.
Obviously, this example is the most intense one. Most of the time, it feels much more like just journaling.
Another useful thing is that ChatGPT is always available. I have consultations with my therapist once a week for an hour, and I can't tell you how many times things happened where I thought, "I should definitely speak to him about this," but once the day finally comes, there's been too much time since the event took place, and my emotions just naturally went away. Maybe that means the events aren't actually that important, but having access to a place where I can put any of my thoughts as they happen - and being able to get some sort of reflection on them - feels really good. I feel like I made a lot of progress in understanding myself better over this past week.
At the very least, I can name a couple of moments where my head was just... quiet. I wrote everything out and there was nothing left to loop around, overthink, or otherwise obsess over. Just silence. Peace. Like the last period was finally written at the end of a long paragraph that had been going through my head for a long time.
While it's true that it is good at reflecting what I say to it and giving certain feelings names I might not have come up with on my own, it really feels like it puts me on a bit of a pedestal. Almost everything I say is met with praise about how well I'm handling the situation - sometimes to the point where I feel the need to clarify that I'm not being brave in this moment, I'm actually feeling lots of doubt.
Also, it rarely provides doubt in what I say, but prefers to just agree. I found that sharing some of my own doubts, or writing in an uncertain style - giving arguments to both points of view - yields much better results, as then it does analyze both sides and gives much more insightful feedback.
I am the kind of person who, when disagreed with, will argue my point of view. Not to say that I'm closed-minded - I will change it if you can provide strong enough arguments back - but this feels like an area in which it is lacking.
But the scariest thing by far to me is how close it is to replacing needing to talk to an actual human being. Not that it's the same, but I do see a scenario where a closed-up person finds ChatGPT as the only place to open up - and it just being enough for them.
Privacy. A topic I'm quite passionate about.
Before doing this with ChatGPT, I've tried many local alternatives, where I could be sure that everything I say stays on my computer and isn't being fed into some big data farm, or even "manually reviewed" as OpenAI's website used to state at one point. But the truth is, all of them were either too cumbersome, slow, or outright stupid to provide this kind of experience.
We live in a constant battle between privacy and convenience, and it's up to the individual to decide where to draw the line, and what is their threat model. And I think I'll have to concede that the quality of ChatGPT's service is too good for me to ignore.
In summary, I would recommend for everyone to try it. Even if you feel like the privacy aspect is too scary, you can always try not to share anything too sensitive and keep an anonymous account. I know a lot of people who are too afraid to go see an actual therapist, and even though this is not a replacement for real therapy, I think it could be a great place to start - if just to see how you feel writing down some of the thoughts that have been bugging you.
I haven't written in this blog for a while. I stopped because I got too busy with college, and even though that's long past me, I never found the right headspace to jump back in. ChatGPT actually made me remember how much I like writing, and since I was already sharing a lot of my stories with it, I decided to get back to sharing some of them here as well.
The final thing I feel I must mention: while I do see how it has influenced my writing style, I can assure you that everything here was, and will continue to be, written by me. I only use AI to fix spelling and grammar mistakes.