1st talk of the 2026-2027 Season
Bret Shermerhorn, LMHC
What is the nature of the relationship that is offered by Artificial Intelligence? Following the publication of his book Holding and Holding Back, in part a reflection on the kind of relationship AI is not, Bret Schermerhorn takes up the question of the kind of relationship AI makes possible. The history of AI and the emerging technologies of the late 20th and early 21st centuries will be traced alongside the increased focus on the relationship between client and therapist and the social dimension of psychoanalytic practice during the same period. The phenomenology of Martin Heidegger and Maurice MerleauPonty will be used to ground the existential dimension of the problem AI poses through an interrogation of the ontological dimensions of existentially informed psychotherapy. As opposed to the intersubjectivity of thinkers like Robert Stolorow and Jessica Benjamin, Schermerhorn will argue that the relationship offered by AI is an intrasubjective one: that AI instantiates a kind of relationship with the self that is neither wholly isolated nor wholly relational in ways that are important for understanding the therapeutic use of these new technologies and their broader impact on how we understand being with ourselves and being with others.
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Boston College, Lynch School of Education
Campion Hall, Room 139
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attend all four talks of the series,
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