Algorithmic objectivity and the analyst’s subjectivity

Abstract: The article explores the relationship between conversational artificial intelligence and human subjectivity, in the context of the transformations brought about by the digital age. It examines how conversational AI technology, though offering constant availability and an appearance of empathy, cannot substitute the affective and relational experience that characterizes the human therapeutic encounter. Dialogue with AI represents a space in which the subject projects thoughts and emotions without these being truly received, contained, or transformed through the presence of a living being. The importance of the therapist’s subjectivity, corporeality, and emotional presence in the analytic process is reaffirmed, elements that are impossible to replicate by a non-human entity. The paper argues that psychological development and transformation require contact with a real otherness, capable of containing and reflecting, but also of frustrating, essential aspects that artificial intelligence, no matter how sophisticated, cannot embody.