My Therapist Is an AI and I’m Not Ashamed

You know, I was thinking… I asked an AI (Claude, if you care) to explain Adlerian psychology to me, and it actually gave me something useful.

I wasn’t looking for therapy. I was looking for a framework. I’d read a Marc Andreessen post that mentioned Alfred Adler, a psychologist from the early 1900s who had a different take on how the human mind works. Freud said your past determines your present. Adler said your goals determine your present. Your feelings aren’t discoveries. They’re productions. You manufacture them to serve whatever objective you’re chasing, whether you know it or not.

So I asked the AI to break it down further. Give me examples. Walk me through how Adlerian psychology applies to a founder running a business, a husband and father managing a family, a guy who struggles with sleep here and there.

And it did, for as long as I wanted, without a clock running at $200 an hour.

Adler’s version goes like this…if you’re anxious, anxiety is useful to you right now. It keeps you from doing the thing you’re afraid to do. It manufactures a reason to stay small. The feeling is a tool you built.

That flipped it on its head. Anxiety was a door.

I started looking at every emotion through that lens. Anger? What’s the goal? Procrastination? What am I avoiding, and why is avoidance serving me? Guilt? Who benefits from me feeling guilty?

I needed a little self-interrogation, and having an AI as the sparring partner made it easier. There’s no ego on the other side of the conversation, and nobody nodding at me asking how that makes me feel. I got the questions, and then I had to go think.

Adler died in 1937. His ideas are almost a hundred years old. And it took a machine to finally get them in front of me in a way that stuck.

I’ll take the insight. Even if it came from an evolved toaster.

Heritage Films produces personal documentary films for families across the United States and the world. If you’ve been thinking about your family’s story and what it means, sometimes the best first step is just starting the conversation. We’re here when you’re ready.