AI Has No Spine. Could it be Your Therapist? A Depth and Somatic Perspective
Recently, I found myself drawn back into the intricate, imaginal world of C. G. Jung’s Memories, Dreams, Reflections—his deeply personal, mythic account of his inner life and the unfolding of what would become Analytic Psychology. In it, Jung observes how young people often become “unconsciously caught up in the spirit of the age…”¹, unable to fully see beyond the cultural currents they’re swimming in. This idea struck a chord.
Today, we are living in a time when the spirit of the age is increasingly shaped by artificial intelligence. Tools like large language models—fluent, seemingly wise, and often strangely comforting digital companions—are now being turned to not just for writing or research, but for therapeutic insight. Many clients, friends, and even therapists themselves have explored these interactions. Some report feeling heard. Some are offered perspectives that help them feel differently, or at least think differently. And so the question naturally arises:
Could AI one day be your therapist?
From a depth psychology and somatic therapy perspective, the answer is more nuanced than a simple yes or no.
Artificial Intimacy and the Illusion of Contact
At her 2023 keynote at SXSW, psychotherapist Esther Perel discussed the concept of artificial intimacy—a growing phenomenon in which digital tools mimic closeness and connection, often without the relational risks or depth real intimacy requires.² She cautioned that while these interactions may feel comforting, they risk replacing the very things that allow for emotional transformation: rupture, repair, and embodied relational presence.
In psychotherapy, this distinction is critical. AI can simulate empathy, but it cannot co-create meaning in the somatic, soulful field of human connection. Therapy is more than advice—it is relationship.
The Seduction of the New
Jung cautioned that our captivation with the new can sever us from the old—those deep wellsprings of ancestry, psyche, and meaning that have always shaped human identity. “Our souls as well as our bodies are composed of individual elements which were all already present in the ranks of our ancestors… The ‘newness’ in the individual psyche is an endlessly varied recombination of age-old components.”¹
Jung viewed the human psyche as still catching up to its own evolutionary inheritance. In his view, healing and integration require not abandonment of the past but reconciliation with it.
The Spine as Soul
While training in Craniosacral Unwinding with Gary Strauss at the Life Energy Institute, I was moved by the practice’s central tenet: that the spinal core and flow of cerebrospinal fluid is also the center of soul. The spine, in this view, is not merely anatomical—it is relational, ancestral, and energetic.
In somatic psychotherapy, we listen with our bodies. We attune to what is unspoken—what pulses through tissue, fluid, fascia, and breath. This is an intelligence born of evolutionary biology and human connection, not code. It cannot be simulated by AI, which, however eloquent, has no spine, no pulse, no relational or trauma history of its own.
The Matrixial Borderspace: A Feminine Relational Sphere
Feminist psychoanalyst and artist Bracha L. Ettinger offers another illuminating perspective. Her concept of the matrixial borderspace³ introduces a transsubjective mode of relating—where subjectivities are co-emergent, porous, and entangled. It is a psychic space shaped not by separation and autonomy but by shared vulnerability, maternal grief, and relational co-linking.
This framework, born from a feminine and bodily lens, highlights a key limitation of AI: it cannot feel-with you. It cannot grieve with you. It cannot share space in this matrixial, soul-to-soul field of presence. It may reflect your story, but it cannot co-carry it in solidarity with you.
More Than Words: Why Embodiment Matters in Therapy
Especially in body-centered psychotherapy, the spoken word is often only one layer. What heals is not always what is said, but what is felt, held, and witnessed—often in silence, in pause, in breath. The therapist’s nervous system, history, and presence become part of the relational field.
AI can be helpful in moments. It can generate insight or provide emotional regulation tips. But it cannot sit with your trembling. It cannot meet your tears with tears of its own. It cannot offer the living, fallible, compassionate presence of a fellow human being—because it isn’t one.
Tethered to the Soul of the World
So how do we remain open to the tools of today while staying tethered to the soul of the world—to our bodies, our ancestries, and our animal hearts?
The invitation is not to demonize technology, but to contextualize it. To welcome it as a tool, not a replacement. To remember that healing happens in relationship—with each other, with the body, and with the unconscious forces that shape our becoming.
AI can mirror us, yes. But it cannot meet us.
Because the soul, after all, has a spine.
And it knows when it is being met.
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Footnotes
Jung, C.G. (1963). Memories, Dreams, Reflections. New York: Vintage Books.
Perel, E. (2023, March). SXSW Keynote: Artificial Intimacy. [SXSW Conference, Austin, TX].
Ettinger, B.L. (2006). The Matrixial Borderspace. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.