How does the therapeutic relationship outperform AI chatbots in long-term psychotherapy?
Helen Marlo, Ph.D., is Dean of the School of Psychology and Professor of Clinical Psychology at Notre Dame de Namur University. She is a practicing clinician with nearly 30 years of experience as a licensed clinical psychologist and certified psychoanalyst. Her work centers on long-term, depth-oriented care, emphasizing the therapeutic relationship, clinical nuance, and sustained healing beyond quick fixes. Marlo can speak to the growing use of AI chatbots for mental health guidance, the risks of substituting automated tools for live and clinically supervised treatment, and the limits of dehumanized care. She brings a grounded perspective on what meaningful psychotherapy requires in practice.
Scott Douglas Jacobsen interviews Dr. Helen Marlo about AI chatbots posing as therapy. Marlo argues real psychotherapy is not advice, venting, or quick tools, but an emergent, emotionally charged relationship where conflict, repair, and nuance drive change. Chatbots can deliver education and strategies, yet they cannot judge what fits a person’s history, motives, and unconscious patterns. She warns convenience, anonymity, and low vulnerability can reinforce the very issues treatment addresses, while AI guidance may distort major life decisions outside crises. Depth-oriented care, she says, builds durable inner capacities through sustained human attunement, and clinically supervised practice remains the safer standard.