ArticleFrontiers in psychology2021
"Like I'm Talking to a Real Person": Exploring the Meaning of Transference for the Use and Design of AI-Based Applications in Psychotherapy.
Article in Frontiers in psychology, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 20 papers.
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Who cites it
20 citing papers in PubMed.
- "I Really Feel Heard by AI": A Cultural Case Study of AI-Mediated Listening Across China and the UK.Culture, medicine and psychiatry · 2026Article
- Exploring the Potential and Challenges of Digital and AI-Driven Psychotherapy for ADHD, OCD, Schizophrenia, and Substance Use Disorders: A Comprehensive Narrative Review.Indian journal of psychological medicine · 2026Review
- Artificial intelligence in traumatic stress treatment: The TRUST framework for ethical development, clinical applications, and research advancement.Journal of traumatic stress · 2026Review
- The application of AI-assisted music therapy tools in mental health interventions.Frontiers in psychology · 2026Review
- Mentalizing Without a Mind: Psychotherapeutic Potential of Generative AI.Journal of medical Internet research · 2025Article
- Artificial intelligence-assisted visual elicitation in anorexia nervosa : Qualitative case studies.Neuropsychiatrie : Klinik, Diagnostik, Therapie und Rehabilitation : Organ der Gesellschaft Osterreichischer Nervenarzte und Psychiater · 2025Article
- Exploring the Application of AI and Extended Reality Technologies in Metaverse-Driven Mental Health Solutions: Scoping Review.Journal of medical Internet research · 2025Article
- Artificial Intelligence for Psychotherapy: A Review of the Current State and Future Directions.Indian journal of psychological medicine · 2025Review
- A Scoping Review of AI-Driven Digital Interventions in Mental Health Care: Mapping Applications Across Screening, Support, Monitoring, Prevention, and Clinical Education.Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Review
- The Role of Virtual Reality in Personalized Medicine: Advancing Prediction, Prevention, and Participation.Journal of medical systems · 2025Review
- Exploring the Ethical Challenges of Conversational AI in Mental Health Care: Scoping Review.JMIR mental health · 2025Article
- The externalization of internal experiences in psychotherapy through generative artificial intelligence: a theoretical, clinical, and ethical analysis.Frontiers in digital health · 2025Article
- Artificial intelligence-based psychotherapy: focusing on common psychotherapeutic factors.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2025Article
- The use of Artificial Intelligence in Psychotherapy: Practical and Ethical Aspects.Turk psikiyatri dergisi = Turkish journal of psychiatry · 2024Article
- Beyond humanism: telling response-able stories about significant otherness in human-chatbot relations.Frontiers in psychology · 2024Review
- Editorial: Highlights in psycho-oncology: study protocols - improving evidence for future personalised cancer care.Frontiers in psychology · 2024Article
- Transference and the psychological interplay in AI-enhanced mental healthcare.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2024Article
- Research Hotspots and Trends of Social Robot Interaction Design: A Bibliometric Analysis.Sensors (Basel, Switzerland) · 2023Review
- A Beta-Prototype Chatbot for Increasing Health Literacy of Patients With Decompensated Cirrhosis: Usability Study.JMIR human factors · 2023Article
- Waiting for a digital therapist: three challenges on the path to psychotherapy delivered by artificial intelligence.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2023Article
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2 authors.
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Abstract
AI-enabled virtual and robot therapy is increasingly being integrated into psychotherapeutic practice, supporting a host of emotional, cognitive, and social processes in the therapeutic encounter. Given the speed of research and development trajectories of AI-enabled applications in psychotherapy and the practice of mental healthcare, it is likely that therapeutic chatbots, avatars, and socially assistive devices will soon translate into clinical applications much more broadly. While AI applications offer many potential opportunities for psychotherapy, they also raise important ethical, social, and clinical questions that have not yet been adequately considered for clinical practice. In this article, we begin to address one of these considerations: the role of transference in the psychotherapeutic relationship. Drawing on Karen Barad's conceptual approach to theorizing human-non-human relations, we show that the concept of transference is necessarily reconfigured within AI-human psychotherapeutic encounters. This has implications for understanding how AI-driven technologies introduce changes in the field of traditional psychotherapy and other forms of mental healthcare and how this may change clinical psychotherapeutic practice and AI development alike. As more AI-enabled apps and platforms for psychotherapy are developed, it becomes necessary to re-think AI-human interaction as more nuanced and richer than a simple exchange of information between human and nonhuman actors alone.
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