The Illusion of Connection See Sky News Interview: 'can people have real relationships with chatgpt?'
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The Illusion of Connection: Can AI replace therapy?
As a psychotherapist, I find the growing use of AI for advice, support, and even friendship a fascinating and concerning development. There are certainly many benefits to using AI, but I think it is a nuanced and delicate development which, when viewed through a psychological and relational lens, opens up questions about emotional development, authenticity, and the nature of human connection.
I understand the appeal. AI offers people an immediate, 24/7 point of contact. For individuals who might not yet have access to therapy due to cost, location, or stigma, AI can serve as a low-barrier entry point for reflection or emotional expression. It doesn’t judge, responds instantly; for people who are lonely, it can be a lifeline or a sounding board. In that sense, AI tools can be a supportive first step, especially when someone is in distress and simply needs to feel heard.
However, it must be approached with caution and undoubtedly there are some serious ethical issues to be considered. Even advanced AI systems can misunderstand context, nuance, or provide advice that is not clinically sound or tailored to an individual's psychological history. This becomes especially problematic for vulnerable users. AI doesn’t have the capacity to monitor for serious risk factors like suicidal ideation in a clinically reliable way which makes its use without human oversight ethically problematic.
While AI can simulate empathy and understanding to a degree, it also does not replace human connection or the deep relational dynamics of therapy. A real therapist brings lived experience, intuition, and the capacity for attunement in a way that AI cannot replicate. Therapy is not just about giving advice, it’s about holding space, noticing patterns, and building a therapeutic relationship. That depth of connection is something AI still can't offer.
One of the fundamental issues I see is that many people approach AI expecting quick answers, clear solutions, and emotional validation on demand. We live in an increasingly entitled society that struggles to tolerate uncertainty or complexity. This craving for immediate resolution leaves little space for ambivalence, the grey area of our lives which is an essential component of emotional maturity. Therapy isn’t about giving people the ‘right answer.’ It’s often about helping someone sit in the unknown, tolerate doubt, and make space for multiple truths. That’s where resilience is cultivated. It comes from being able to sit in that space of uncomfortableness and not look to rush out of it, not in perfect answers, but in being able to live with complexity.
AI, by design, avoids rupture. It often aims to please or placate. AI is designed to simulate companionship, to give the feeling of being heard. It echoes our words, validates emotions, and offers helpful suggestions. But real connection requires vulnerability on both sides. A therapeutic relationship is not just about being understood, it’s about entering a dynamic space where both people are impacted. AI can’t be affected. It doesn’t care, and it doesn’t change as a result of your presence. That makes the connection inherently one-sided. And that is concerning. The absence of being truly known, of being in a relationship that allows for rupture and repair, strips us of something vital.
And human relationships are messy. Ruptures happen; misunderstandings, disappointments, moments where we don't feel seen. Yet it is through this messiness that growth occurs. Avoiding rupture means avoiding the repair that builds resilience. The illusion of connection offered by AI may soothe temporarily, but it cannot provide the transforming experience of being deeply known and still held through conflict. And it’s precisely in that area of disappointment, just as with the mother and baby when that grandiosity and omnipotence are shattered, that growth takes place.
This links with Winnicott’s concept of the "good enough mother," which involves a developmental process where the infant first experiences an illusion of omnipotence (the mother seems to perfectly meet all needs) but gradually must face the disillusionment that the mother is separate and fallible. "It is the gradual failure of adaptation to need that provides the conditions for the baby’s growing sense of reality and of externality" (Winnicott, 1965, p. 145). This disillusionment is essential for ego development and for forming a sense of external reality, limitations, and ultimately the capacity for intimacy with otherness, rather than merger. Without adequate opportunities for disillusionment, we fail to develop true self-other relationships. The culture of immediacy may foster a false self-adaptation rather than mature relating.
It also echoes Klein’s theory, which suggests that early development involves splitting others into "good" and "bad" parts. Maturity comes from integrating these and realising the same person can love and disappoint us (Klein, 1946/1997, p. 74). This ability to bear emotional complexity is foundational for intimacy.
Becoming aware of the other as a separate mind is one of the most mature human achievements. It’s what allows us to have real relationships rather than projections. It teaches us how to love, how to lose, how to compromise, how to repair. And it only happens in the presence of true difference. To grow a mind, we must meet another mind and discover, with both joy and grief, that it is not our own.
As a couple psychotherapist with a particular interest in intercultural couples, another limitation of AI is its inability to truly see, to observe a person’s body language, tone, cultural markers, or visible identity traits. But more than that, it can’t pick up on what is unspoken: the subtle, often unconscious expressions of difference that shape human experience. In therapy, we work with what's not being said as much as with what is. Race, gender, class, neurodivergence, trauma histories, these often enter the room as invisible dynamics. If they’re not noticed or made space for, they remain hidden. AI doesn’t have the capacity to recognize or gently surface these dimensions.
A good therapeutic relationship doesn’t reinforce idealization or agreement. It allows for difference; it allows for rupture, for misunderstanding, for the therapist to not be what the client wants without abandoning them. This helps the client internalize the idea that difference doesn’t mean rejection. That disagreement doesn’t mean disconnection. The therapist becomes the first ‘other’ who can survive being other, who can be separate and still stay present. That can be deeply healing as it mirrors the capacity to feel connected in a meaningful way without collapsing into sameness.
This messy and imperfect process of disillusionment and finding your way back to connection, is at the core of mature relating. Because one of the most important and painful parts of psychological development is the realisation that others are not the extension of ourselves. That they have their own thoughts, feelings, limits, and truths that may not match our own and that ultimately separation does not equate to abandonment. In early development, a baby begins life merged with their caregiver. Over time, through misattunements and the slow rhythm of being seen and not seen, a child begins to realise: You are not me. In that moment, something essential occurs: the mind differentiates, and it becomes possible to feel, This is where I end, and you begin.
When we encounter someone who thinks differently from us, someone who surprises us, disappoints us, challenges us, we are given the opportunity to grow. It is how we become curious, kind. As Fonagy (2020) notes: “Our capacity to see both our own and others’ point of view is the essence of our humanity, which from an evolutionary point of view has enabled our planetary ascendance”. The encounter with difference is how we learn to regulate frustration, tolerate ambiguity, and respect autonomy. It’s how we develop empathy, understanding that someone else sees the world differently, and that their reality is valid too. It’s how we learn boundaries and how we stay curious, engaging with the mystery of the other, rather than trying to control or absorb them. It’s how we develop respect, allowing the other to exist in their full subjectivity, without needing them to mirror us. When the other is only ever a reflection, we lose the chance to grow. It stifles our curiosity. Simulated friendships with AI offer the comfort of sameness but deny the essential human task of relating to a mind which is not your own, echoing what Esther Perel calls “counterfeit connection” whereby “modern loneliness masks as hyper-connectivity” (Perel, 2021). In this way, AI enables us to reach for connection while keeping vulnerability at a safe distance, confusing simulated intimacy with the real thing.
A final, and perhaps most unsettling, reflection is that AI has no body, no face, no past. It does not enter the room with a visible presence or lived history. There is no eye contact, no shifting posture, no shared breath. In therapy, and in any emotionally meaningful relationship, so much unfolds in these subtle, often unconscious cues: a glance, a pause, an uncomfortable silence.
As a last word, used thoughtfully, AI does hold the capacity, when held within clear boundaries, to be a supportive companion, or even to supplement therapy, by standing as a sounding board that may deepen reflection and self-awareness. But it must never be mistaken for a replacement. Real therapeutic encounters and friendships are transformative precisely because they involve an embodied presence, mutual influence, and the relational complexity that comes from meeting a separate, responsive, and fallible other. Without this, we remain in the comfort of illusion rather than the growth that comes from true connection.
References:
Fonagy, P. (2020) Opinion: Kindness can work wonders, especially for the vulnerable. UCL News. Available at: https://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/2020/may/opinion-kindness-can-work-wonders-especially-vulnerable(Accessed: 9 August 2025).
Klein, M. (1946/1997) Notes on Some Schizoid Mechanisms. In: Envy and Gratitude and Other Works 1946–1963. London: Hogarth Press, p. 74.
Perel, E. (2021) Esther Perel on the Nature of Connection and Modern Loneliness. [Podcast] Where Should We Begin?. Available at: https://atmos.earth/podcast/esther-perel-on-the-nature-of-connection-and-modern-loneliness-ep-1/ (Accessed: 9 August 2025).
Winnicott, D.W. (1965) The Maturational Process and the Facilitating Environment: Studies in the Theory of Emotional Development. New York: International University Press, p. 145.
The Dance We Do: Curiosity, Difference, and the Real Work of
Every couple has a dance. Sometimes it is obvious, but more often it is played out without either partner fully noticing. One person makes a move and the other retreats. One stops showing affection and the other takes a step back. Over time the steps begin to define you. They become the choreography of your dynamic, something you live inside without realising how much it shapes your closeness. Once you can notice it, name it, and watch it in motion, you can begin to create a new dance.
The dance is not random. It is shaped by each partner’s history, fears, and longings. Some steps are defensive, designed to protect from shame or rejection. Others are hopeful, reaching for recognition and care. We move between each other’s needs and our own, sometimes gracefully, sometimes clumsily. Often without realising it we find ourselves in a choreography that repeats no matter how many times we say we want to change. There is comfort in the familiar, even when it hurts.
This is the work of intimacy. It is not about removing difficulty but about finding the courage to look at it directly. It is the willingness to slow down enough to see the pattern and wonder what it protects and what it costs. In therapy this can mean pausing in the middle of a moment to notice what is happening. When a partner asks a question that lands as cold and factual, can we be curious about whether it was an attempt to connect rather than a withdrawal. When one goes quiet or trails off mid sentence, can we wonder if they are protecting themselves from getting it wrong rather than withholding on purpose. When we assume the other does not care, can we ask if that assumption is shielding something softer, a fear of being left, of becoming less important, of drifting apart.
Difference as the heart of love
Difference is not the enemy of closeness. In fact it is the heart of mature love. Psychological development rests on the painful and liberating discovery that the other is not an extension of us. Donald Winnicott, the famous paediatrician turned psychotherapist, described how a child begins life in a state of imagined merger with their caregiver, believing their needs create the world. Slowly, through misattunements and disappointments that are bearable, the child learns that the caregiver is separate. This is not a betrayal but the birth of reality. It is how we grow the capacity to be with another person without needing them to be the same as us.
The renowned psychoanalyst Melanie Klein described the work of integrating good and bad into one whole person. Maturity comes when we can hold both love and disappointment without splitting them apart. Peter Fonagy speaks of the human achievement of holding our own view alongside the view of another. In couples this means staying present when your partner’s experience of the same moment is different from yours, and resisting the pull to make them agree with you in order to feel safe.
Curiosity as the bridge
Curiosity is the bridge here. It allows us to walk toward the other’s mind without demanding they meet us halfway before we move. Curiosity keeps us from sealing the other inside our own assumptions. It creates a space where difference can be explored rather than defended against. Without it we retreat into certainty, the kind that feels protective but quietly starves the relationship.
In my work I have seen curiosity transform moments that were heading for disconnection. A partner who felt ignored after the other stayed out late learned to say, I am starting to tell myself you do not care, but really I think I am afraid we will drift apart. The other, instead of defending, could then respond, I do care, and I want to understand how to make time feel safe for you. These are small moments, but they are the steps that change the dance.
The invitation of The Dance We Do
The Dance We Do is the name I have given to a body of work designed to help couples slow down, see their patterns, and choose new steps. It is not a quick fix or a set of tips. It is an invitation to sit with what is messy, complex, and often tender. It asks partners to meet each other with curiosity instead of certainty, to let difference be a place of learning rather than a trigger for distance.
They say curiosity killed the cat. In relationships curiosity is what keeps the dance alive. It keeps us turning toward each other with questions rather than verdicts. It keeps us open to surprise, to being moved and changed by another mind. It makes repair possible after rupture. And perhaps most importantly it reminds us that love is not the end of curiosity. Love is the place where curiosity can do its most important work.
Work with me
If you would like to explore your own dance in a focused, short-term way, I am offering The Dance We Do — a 6-week couples therapy series. In-person spaces available on Wednesdays (12–4pm) and limited online spaces on Thursdays (10–12). £500 per couple.
Contact me for more info.