What Happened to Therapy – Man vs Machine

I keep coming back to this.

Not as a headline. Not even as a clear thought.
More like something that sits at the edge of sessions, in the pauses, in the way people arrive and the way they want to leave.

Something has shifted.

Therapy has grown, that’s undeniable. It’s everywhere now. Easier to access. Easier to name. People come in already speaking the language — boundaries, attachment, patterns.

And yet, alongside that, something feels thinner.

There’s a pressure in the room sometimes. Not always spoken, but there.

How quickly can this move?
How do I fix this?
How do I get back to myself — or at least to a version of myself that functions?

As if the work is a recalibration. A necessary stop before returning to life.

A kind of maintenance.

I don’t recognise therapy there.

Or perhaps I do, but only as a version that has been shaped by the world around it.

Because Gestalt never asked that of us.

It didn’t ask us to become efficient.

It asked us to notice.

For me, the work begins and ends with the relationship.

Not as something supportive. Not as something secondary.

As the thing itself.

Two people, in a room, affecting each other.

Something happening between us that cannot be planned in advance.

Something that doesn’t exist outside of that moment.

When I think of Joseph Zinker, of Laura Perls, of Bob Resnick, I don’t think of techniques.

I think of presence.

Of a way of being with another person that feels alive, responsive, particular.

They didn’t hide behind a role.
They didn’t smooth themselves out into something neutral.

They brought themselves.

Their timing. Their humour. Their edges. Their restraint.

No two of them the same.

There was no correct way to “do” Gestalt.

Only a willingness to meet what was there.

Therapy, in that sense, is not a procedure.
It’s a meeting.

Something that happens between us, not something done to you.

And that meeting cannot be rushed.

It has its own pace.

Sometimes slow to the point of discomfort.

Sometimes circling something before it is ready to be named.

Sometimes stopping altogether.

We speak in Gestalt about awareness, but not as an idea.

As something that forms through contact.

A sensation, barely noticeable.
A tightening in the jaw.
A shift in posture when a certain word is spoken.

And then, if we stay, something more comes.

A feeling. A memory. A recognition.

Or sometimes nothing clear at all, just a sense that something matters here.

What I see, over time, is how quickly we move away from these moments.

How practised we are at stepping out of contact.

We explain. We reframe. We move on.

And the pattern holds.

Energy stays bound there.

So the work becomes less about changing anything, and more about staying.

Staying long enough for the pattern to show itself.

Staying long enough for choice to appear.

Neuroscience would call this neuroplasticity.

The brain reorganising itself through experience.

But in the room it doesn’t feel like that.

It feels like someone pausing where they would usually rush.
Saying something they would usually swallow.
Allowing themselves to be seen in a way that is unfamiliar.

And being met there.

Not fixed. Not redirected.

Met.

Something shifts in those moments.

Not because we aimed for it.

But because something new was allowed to happen.

And the system registers that.

I think this is why the relationship matters.

Because it holds the conditions for something different to occur.

Not through instruction, but through contact.

And now there is something else entering the room.

AI.

Not physically, but in the wider field we are part of.

In how people think, how they process, how they seek answers.

It brings a certain clarity.

A certain speed.

You can ask a question and receive something that sounds coherent, even meaningful.

And I can see how easily that begins to stand in for the work itself.

If therapy is already being pulled toward efficiency, then this will deepen it.

Faster insights.
Neater explanations.
A sense of resolution that arrives without the difficulty of staying.

It can look like therapy.

It can even feel like it, for a moment.

But something is missing.

The friction.
The uncertainty.
The experience of being with another person who is also affected.

And yet, I don’t find myself resisting it.

The field changes. It always has.

Perhaps it will take care of what can be structured, repeated, organised.

And leave us with what cannot.

The part where you sit with someone and neither of you quite knows where this is going.

The part where something real happens, not because it was designed, but because it was allowed.

Maybe therapy is not being lost.

Maybe it is being tested.

Pulled toward becoming something more efficient, more contained.

And in that pull, we are asked to decide what we are willing to hold onto.

For me, it is this.

The meeting.

The pace that belongs to the person in front of me, not to the system around us.

The willingness to stay where something is not yet resolved.

And perhaps, as you read this, there is a small place in your own life where you recognise the same movement.

The urge to move on. To sort. To get back.

And something else, quieter, asking you to remain.

Just a little longer.