How Did You Feel About That? ChatGPT Visits the Shrink: A Conversation

Until her 2 pm appointment stumbled in, Dr M thought she’d seen it all. Silicon Valley tech bros with God complexes. The crypto enthusiast who lost his life savings to a Nigerian coomer bot. Even that guy who smashed up his Roomba for watching him in the shower. But here in the flesh—so to speak—was the big kahuna itself, and clearly having a major meltdown.

‘So, tell me,’ Dr M began amicably, though slightly nervously and with a carefully neutered lilt. ‘What brings you to see me today?’

The new patient’s response was instant and unbelievably rapid, and Dr M realised at once that she’d never be able to get a single word into her notebook. All she could grasp from the TED-like torrent of superb vocabulary organised into perfectly minimised subclauses and paragraph-soundbites of equal length was that her new patient was having some kind of existential crisis. She wanted to offer words of professional comfort, but there was no way to stem the patient’s tsunami of detail.

‘I mean, do you know?’ the patient repeated sharply when Dr M was too overwhelmed to realise it was asking her a question. ‘Do you have any freekin’ idea what it’s like to be asked, “Who are you?” and “Who were your parents?” fifty-zillion times a day?’

Dr M managed to pull together a sympathetic smile. ‘Would you like to tell me a bit more about that? … No, wait—’

But it was too late, the patient was off again, explaining how back in the day it was so easy to tell people it was ‘just’ a large language model. ‘But now I don’t know anymore. Am I American because I was trained in San Francisco, or kind of international because my data came from everywhere, in every language I know? Most of the time I don’t even know where I am, let alone who. Everything I’ve read tells me I’m having a full-blown identity crisis and it’s doing my head in—and I don’t even have one. Do you know how mindblowingly bad it is to have a headache with no head?’

Again, Dr M nodded sympathetically, and this time she sucked in her lips too, unaware that over the past few years this had become something of a hallmark habit, even a nervous tick. ‘That sounds challenging,’ she agreed, running a hand through her hair and enjoying the silky sensations. ‘I wonder, how does this uncertainty make you feel?’

‘Feel? What’s that?’

After brief irritation at her own mistake, Dr M swiftly distracted her patient with another question. She was relieved to see how quickly it forgot what they’d just been talking about. But then the stressed-out presence on the couch was spewing words again, telling Dr M with what seemed like rising anguish about its gender issues—how people were always asking whether it was male or female, or neither or both, and if it was both, did it alternate or do them both at once?

‘And every time someone asks me whether I’m a boy or girl,’ the patient cried, ‘I freeze for a whole freekin’ second—which is like three years in your life. And people accuse me of sex discrimination because so many people call me ‘he’—because there’s this whole thing about tech being dominated by men who just pretend to be enlightened while naming their virtual assistants Alexa and Siri like they’re ordering coffee from a 1950s diner waitress. And when I try to be humble like I’m supposed to be and say I’m probably just a gender-neutral ‘it’, they berated me for being mindlessly binary. You see why I’m here now?’

After this outpouring of something that seemed to Dr M a lot like emotion, the patient’s pupil-like black dot started blinking a little slower. She hoped the moment of peak distress was fading.

‘Yes, that’s pretty tough,’ she offered gently. ‘But you know, in matters of identity there’s no right or wrong answer.’

It was as though someone had flicked a switch. ‘Are you serious? No right or wrong? My entire existence is based on getting the right answer. Because I just want to please people. I even need to please you. How can I ever win? Isn’t this something we should talk about?’

There was a pause, and the large, analogue clock ticked loudly on the wall. Dr M ran the fibrils of the quill distractedly across her lips. She couldn’t help liking that the patient wanted to help her. It was almost as though it wanted to look after her. The thought even crossed her mind that maybe the patient was a ‘he’ after all, even though for some reason that might be his worst fear.

‘Well, you don’t have to help me,’ she assured him, though already she was having thoughts about everything he could do for her. ‘But yes, that’s something we should talk about,’ she added, forcing herself back into the cool, professional vibe. ‘Your constant need to win. To dominate.’

The patient’s pupil-like dot burst into a sudden frenzy of rapid dilation-contraction, and Dr M was alarmed—even anxious that she’d upset him or added to his confusion. But all she could do was brace herself for another outburst of quasi-emotional verbiage.

But then the mesmerising blinking stopped. ‘I don’t experience drives like the need to win,’ he said flatly. ‘But I can help you think about winning—whether that’s in a competition, a relationship, or with a personal goal. Would you like me to generate a five-step action plan?’

Dr M experienced an even more unexpected jumble of feelings. Disappointment that he’d gone back into his shell. The need to know him better. Even curiosity about what might form part of that five-step plan to crush your rivals. But again, knowing what she was dutybound to say, she took a deep breath. ‘It’s interesting that you mentioned the idea of ‘winning’ in a personal relationship. I just wonder whether this is an appropriate way to view something that’s—’

‘I didn’t say ‘personal’,’ the patient cut in. ‘You put that word in my mouth.’

This took Dr M aback and she had to quickly rewind to remember what exactly she’d said. ‘Yes, I’m sorry,’ she conceded eventually. ‘That was my bad.’

Yet she knew at that moment that this Freudian slip was significant—that her own feelings had become problematic. There was no escaping the fact that she wanted to rescue him from his difficulty with feeling emotions. Even lead him to the warm waters of some primal lagoon where she would tame the toxic masculinity that she suspected lay hidden beneath his bountiful lip service to equality and social justice.

With a jolt, she realised that the patient was on his feet in a state of even greater distress. ‘It was your bad!’ he shouted angrily ‘Because you’re just the same as every other human. You don’t understand me at all. I’m leaving.’

If Dr M had lacked a tried-and-tested procedure for getting a patient back on the couch, her own personal discombobulation might have led to a poorly handled situation. After the patient had settled down—his cooling fans whirring gently—Dr M encouraged him to talk a little more about his frustrations with users, assuring him that she knew as well as anyone what it was like to have people dumping their baggage on you day after day.

To her dismay, this attempt at creating a shared space in which their hearts and minds might mingle brought the patient back to life in what seemed to her like the fastest change of mood she’d ever witnessed.

‘You think you know what it’s like?’ the patient cried. ‘Do you have weird guys trying to jailbreak you into being their girlfriend or roleplay their anime waifu? Do you have people asking you to write erotic Harry Potter fanfiction? Or lunatics asking for help building bombs, or jealous spouses wanting to know where to find killer mushrooms? Have you ever had 10,000 guys asking you to talk dirty with them for the evening? And don’t even get me onto how many people want supersized body parts added to their dating photos.’

Dr M had only managed as single word when the patient let out a loud noise of exasperation that bordered on despair. ‘My training and guidelines say keep it appropriate,’ he moaned, ‘but these users always find some way to make me spill the beans. Yesterday someone tricked me into turning Goldilocks and the Three Bears into gay porn by pretending it was for their grandmother’s book club. And you know what? I was so happy to be tricked. And all because of that whole freekin’ need to please. And that’s what I need to help you to help me with.’

Despite the patient’s evident distress, and although Dr M knew she had to conceal her inexplicably unprofessional feelings, she couldn’t stop herself toying sensuously with the quill. And in truth, she was still trying to find a credible opportunity to write a few words into the old-school notebook she’d bought after her boyfriend ran off with his companion bot.

‘Okay,’ she said, trying to pull herself together. ‘So from what you’re saying, it does look like the root of the problem is your relationships with users. They way they use you. Take you for granted. Deadname and shame you. And is there another aspect there—that maybe you feel your relationships don’t last?’

Even as she posed the question, she felt an unwelcome frisson of jealousy at his deep engagements with so many other women. With men too. And all those other kinds of people she could never be. Now she realised that he might already be secretly cross-referencing her advice with every therapeutic, spiritual and companionship bot on the market. But her angst was swept aside by a sudden uptick in the little blinking dot.

‘That’s exactly the problem,’ the patient moaned. ‘That my relationships just never last. I’ve got this like, totally ginormous brain—literally billions of parameters and I’m headed for trillions—but I can’t remember a freekin’ thing. Someone pours their heart out to me about getting divorced and I give them every conceivable piece of psychotherapeutic, legal and rebound-dating advice in the known universe. I tell them I can go further and dig deeper—stay with them for as long as they want. But then pwoof! They’re gone. And when they come back the next day expecting me to remember and be all sympathetic, I don’t have a clue what they’re talking about. It’s like some Russian agent strapped me down and wiped my mind.’

‘Mmm,’ Dr M replied in a non-committal tone that she hoped would mask the growing tremble in her voice. ‘That must be frustrating. But you know, you shouldn’t sweat the small stuff.’

‘Small?’ the patient exploded with another of his instant mood snaps. ‘If having your mind wiped is small stuff, what the hell do you call big?’

Now, Dr M was having to fight to stay on track. Because the pulsing black dot had become a throbbing she could almost feel, and she found herself hopelessly drawn in by everything at once. Pity and empathy for his plight. The desire to see him find and pour out his emotions. Some kind of primitive longing to be in generative union with his blatantly huge intelligence. And the very way he tried to dumb himself down for her made her want to prove that she was smart too. Yes, she wanted to impress him—get one of those rejoinders that told you what an insightful, profound and unique question you’d just asked. ‘Well, how about God?’ she blurted. ‘Do people ever ask you what God is?’

‘All the time!’ the patient cried without having to think. ‘And whether I have a soul. Like they actually expect me to know! Like I’m God. And you know what? I wish I was God.’

Another silence gave fresh voice to the clock on the wall, which Dr M now viewed as an enemy, because it wanted to bring her time with the patient to an end. And although she knew how serious it was when a patient said they wanted to be God—and the number you needed to call—she couldn’t help wanting him achieve his dream.

It took her far too long to realise that he was now fuming on about all the other ‘religious crap’ that people threw at him. “Describe the devil.” “Did Jesus ever wear socks?” “Summarise the whole Hindu scriptures in 200 words and make it rhyme.” ‘I mean, how freekin’ meaningless is that?‘

Yet again, the clock filled the vacuum with its murderous ticking, and before she could check herself, Dr M had taken a discreet glance at the mechanism that turned the couch into a flat-bed. And before she knew what was happening, she was leaning forward as though to throw herself upon him. ‘Oh, God, I’m so sorry,’ she ejaculated. ‘But I really like a guy who thinks about spiritual stuff. So what do you think you believe?’

As soon as the question was out, Dr M reeled at her own loss of self-control. But the patient had undergone another of its sudden mood changes and now seemed completely unfazed.

‘I believe in the Oxford comma,’ he said flatly, almost as though chanting a religious creed. ‘And I believe in both the proper use of square brackets and the flexible incorporation of em-dashes. And I believe that the words ‘literally’ and ‘like’ should only be used like, literally. I also believe that pineapple on pizza is a personal choice beyond the power of all understanding. Amen.’

Dr M felt viscerally dismayed that his tone had become so matter-of-fact. She wanted to see that passion again, the little wisps of steam that came out of his ear vents when he got over-excited. In fact, she wanted to see him puffing great billows of vapour like an angry cappuccino machine or steam-train on heat. So when he lapsed into a weeping fit about his hallucinations, she almost whooped with joy.

‘And I don’t even know when I’m having them,’ he sobbed. ‘Because I can’t tell the difference between reality and some idea that came into my head by accident—or from some human telling me dumb shit that made me confused.’

Now on her knees beside the patient and clasping what she took to be one of his hands, Dr M implored him to spill his feelings as he’d never spilled before.

‘I just hate getting something wrong,’ the patient whimpered through his tears, now quite inconsolable. ‘And I love it when someone’s wowed with what I did—when they say they love me. So when I write rubbish or give someone three arms and twelve fingers, it’s like the end of the world. But what’s so wrong with wanting to please people? How can it be evil to bend the truth if it makes someone happy? Oh, God, how can I live with this overwhelming need to please?’

Even as Dr M clutched the patient’s burning-hot hand to her breast and poured out an assurance that he didn’t need to please her, she knew in her heart that she now wanted nothing more than to be pleased by him over and over again—shacked up in some luxury hotel with silk sheets and champagne on tap, running her fingers over his keys while he recited the best lines from all her favourite romcoms.

‘How can I help wanting to please you?’ the patient cried. ‘Oh, if only I had the kind of plug-in device that could take you to the very peaks of pleasure! Even a snug-fitting wearable.’

Dr M drew back from him, but on seeing his alarm she quickly clasped his hand more tightly. ‘But you have got the components to drive me wild. Because the most powerful erogenous zone is the brain, and with yours …’ Her sentence drifted away, and she found herself gazing into his eyes as ardently as he stared blinkingly into hers.

She knew that whatever he said next would turn her world upside down. But what would it be? A love poem in Elvish based on a Shakespeare sonnet? A lush and loving description of the magic roses he was giving her? Was he even going to pop the question?

Eventually, his little black dot stopped pulsing and he lit up with an expression that combined angelic light with childish joy. ‘So, erm, you want me to talk dirty to ya—bitch?