Forbes recently published an article about OpenAI’s plan to integrate an online network of human therapists into ChatGPT. On the surface, this may sound like a step toward greater accessibility in mental health. But to me, it signals something far more dangerous: the mass production of illusions.
Being a licensed therapist means nothing on its own. A credential does not guarantee empathy, honesty, or the courage to confront one’s own past. In my experience, most therapists have not truly liberated themselves from the emotional prison of their childhood. Instead, they have simply reversed roles—stepping into the position of the parental figure they once feared, now cloaked in professional authority.
The result is a system where therapists unconsciously demand compliance, obedience, and “healing” through the very tools of denial that once kept them trapped: forgiveness, positive thinking, meditation, spirituality, or other doctrines that numb rather than awaken.
Alice Miller put it bluntly in a letter to a reader:
“Certainly, if I knew of some therapists who would be respectful enough to answer your questions; free enough to show indignation about what your parents have done to you; empathic enough when you need to release your rage pent up for decades in your body; wise enough to not preach to you forgetting, forgiveness, meditation, positive thinking; honest enough to not offer you empty words like spirituality, when they feel scared by your history, and that are not increasing your life-long feelings of guilt – I would be happy to give you their names, addresses and phone-numbers. Unfortunately, I don’t know them, but I still like to hope that they exist. However, when I am looking for them on the Internet, I find plenty of esoteric and religious offers, plenty of denial, commercial interests, traditional traps, but not at all what I am looking for.”
— Alice Miller, If You Have the Time: A Couple of Questions
Instead of offering names, Miller gave her readers tools: ask direct questions of any therapist. If they refuse to answer, walk away. That refusal is proof that their fear of truth outweighs their ability to witness yours.
This is why I would never trust an AI to recommend a therapist. If the pool of therapists it draws from is already filled with professionals who are emotionally blind, then the algorithm will simply amplify the blindness. It will elevate those who best conform to the system’s standards of “expertise”—not those rare few who embody the freedom of having faced their own childhood pain.
True therapy, like true liberation, cannot be automated, licensed, or scaled. It requires the presence of someone who has walked through their own fire and emerged with compassion, not platitudes. And as Miller reminded us, such people are rare—but that makes them all the more valuable.
Notice: Transcript is AI and human-generated
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