The Therapeutic Google
When it comes to facilitating authentic self-expression, google may just be the better therapist.
I chanced upon this very revealing and interesting Vox interview (https://www.vox.com/conversations/2017/6/13/15768622/facebook-google-racism-social-media-seth-everybody-lies) with Seth Stephens-Davidowitz, a Harvard-trained economist, following the publication of his book EVERYBODY LIES - which was based on the analysis of Google Trends over selected extended time periods. He referred to Google as a "digital truth serum". But more importantly, one of his responses in this interview exchange caught my imaginative fancy very much. So, here's the quote:
"People tell Google things that they don't tell to possibly anybody else, things they might not tell to family members, friends, anonymous surveys, doctors. People feel very comfortable confessing things to Google. In general, Google tells us that people are different than they present themselves. One way they're different, I have to say, is that they’re nastier and meaner than they often present themselves."
My mind, almost immediately, substituted the word "Google" with "Therapist". So, let's read the above quote again, but this time using the substitute word. It reads like this:
"People tell Therapists things that they don't tell to possibly anybody else, things they might not tell to family members, friends, anonymous surveys, doctors. People feel very comfortable confessing things to Therapists. In general, Therapy tells us that people are different than they present themselves. One way they're different, I have to say, is that they’re nastier and meaner than they often present themselves."
This is a profoundly instructive linguistic experiment, precisely because it involves a juxtaposition of two things that are wildly structurally different but, apparently has this one common functional property. And I also wonder whether musing strictly about therapy in and of itself could have produced the above quote? It would certainly be ideal to be able to independently say this of psychotherapy in general, but I doubt very much it has (or will ever) achieve such distinction.
In that quoted statements, the respondent made three separate but connected claims: First, that "people tell Google things they don't tell possibly anybody else", second, that "people feel comfortable confessing things to Google", and third, that "people are different than they present themselves." Viewed through the lens of pure logic, claims 1 and 3 can only be true if claim 2 is true.In other words, if claim 2 is valid, then 1&3 will invariably follow. Such that we can generate these fundamental axioms:
1. Whenever and wherever people feel comfortable confessing things, they will almost always confess it.
2. People's comfortability confessing increases as the confessor (google/therapist) increases in anonymity (an important nobody) and inanimateness (impersonal detachment).
3. Those who are most in need of confession are those most likely to be uncomfortable confessing (the act carries the greatest risk for them).
Axiom 3 is why axiom 2 is necessary, and why axiom 1 is one of the cardinal raisons d'etre of psychotherapy. But does psychotherapy live up to this function? Can it? Axiom 2 would seem to rule out this possibility given most therapists' desire to escape anonymity and passivity. As therapists, we compete for visibility in the same digital social spaces as our clients. This could be a terrifying factor for a client who has something profound to hide. Yet, it is this visibility that also help signal to a potential client the worthiness and suitability of a therapist in the role of a confessor for a specific issue.
Also, to feel at ease sharing a well-concealed personal fact with a second person, this second person must be seen as given to a life of discretion, or at least that of brutal modesty rather than that of extravagant self-promotion. Like Google, he/she must know a lot in general but reveal very little in specific, must be given to listening more than to talking, more interested in ‘the other' than in ‘self’, and must be a master of curious detachment (all of these displayed in the context of individual therapy). This professional disposition may, however, not be suitable for other purposes of psychotherapy such as in trauma-salient cases and other ego-dystonic states of distress where emotional resonance is valuable.
But the wider implications of the above revelation by Seth concerns the question of whether an inanimate technological algorithm offers a better platform for people to express and reveal their undersides than human institutions such as the religious and the therapeutic enterprises? This is critical in the sense that these human institutions are established with the aim of promoting the expression, the profession, and the affirmation of what is true about human beings and their condition. But unlike Google, humans are neither value free nor insensitive. Because of this and other fundamental limitations, the technological internet may indeed be a better outlet for authentic self-expression. And this further highlights one of the principal reasons why AI-mediated/facilitated therapy would (and not a matter of might) eventually become far more widely appealing to a larger proportion of humanity, especially the already socially alienated.