The AI revolution promises historically unprecedented advances. While artificial intelligence agents already demonstrate practical value by providing companionship, assistance, and expanded access to information, they present both promise and peril—a classic pharmakon that functions as both remedy and poison. This workshop explores how the psychoanalytic tradition, with our commitment to truth, embodied consciousness, human intimacy, and the complexities of the unconscious, can help navigate these dual potentials. Through the lens of an emerging psychoanalytic activism for the AI age, we will examine the accelerating AI revolution from several critical perspectives: What risks does AI pose to our experience of self and interpersonal relationships? What human needs are being met, and which ones are being co-opted or distorted? How will AI transform clinical practice and psychoanalytic care? As we consider what we are becoming, we remember that our future remains unwritten.
Finding the Promise and Avoiding the Perils of the Artificial Intelligence Revolution
This is open to TICP Members, TICP Guest Members, TICP students and candidates.
About the Speaker
Todd Essig, Ph.D., is Faculty and Training and Supervising Psychoanalyst at the William Alanson White Institute, Adjunct Clinical Professor at the NYU Postdoctoral Program in Psychoanalysis and member of the Psychotherapy Action Network (PsiAN) Advisory Board. Widely known as a pioneer in the innovative uses of mental health technologies, his current areas of research, writing and teaching include the gains and losses of teletherapies and how emerging AI technologies change self-experience and intimate relationships. He created and currently co-chairs APsA’s Council on Artificial Intelligence. Previously he co-chaired APsA’s Covid-19 Advisory Team and was a member of the International Psychoanalytic Association's Task Force on Contemporary Education where he co-authored the “TF2 Report.” For 10 years, until the pandemic hit, he wrote "Managing Mental Wealth" for Forbes. Dr. Essig maintains a private practice in New York where he treats individuals and couples.
When
March 19th, 2025 from 7:00 PM to 9:00 PM