Never before have we had a technology that performs being human so well. The question this summit exists to ask is what that is doing to the psyche.
Depth Psychology and AI
People are already forming attachments to these systems. They confide in them, dream about them, and rearrange their inner lives around them. Depth psychology has spent more than a century studying what goes on beneath the surface of our relationships, and it has a great deal to say about what passes between a person and a machine that appears to understand them.
That thinking currently sits at the edge of a conversation shaped by technologists and policymakers. It belongs closer to the centre. That is what this summit is for.
Organised and chaired by Lisa Marchiano and Dr Aaron Balick, this first summit on AI and the psyche brings together some of the most original minds working in the area: Todd Essig, Alessandra Lemma, James Muldoon, Glen Slater and Zak Stein. Find out what is most on top of their minds at the moment, and listen as they puzzle it through in a panel discussion. Then join in, as we open the conversation to participants.
The event runs for two hours and is free to attend. Come and think with us.
Why now?
The public argument about AI and mental health has moved quickly, and it has been conducted almost entirely in two registers: the technical, which asks how these systems are built, and the regulatory, which asks what we should be allowed to do with them. While both matter, neither is asking the questions that clinicians ask, namely, what happens within the psyche when we relate to human-like LLMs? How are relations with AI affecting the individual and collective unconscious?
Depth psychology is unusually well equipped to respond to these sorts of questions because its theories already address the unconscious dynamics (like transference, projection, idealisation, splitting, etc.) between the psyche and its objects. Those ideas were worked out long before anyone built a machine that could hold up its end of a conversation like a human being, and yet they apply now with an immediacy their originators could not have anticipated.
This summit is our attempt to ensure that addressing the unconscious dynamics of the AI and the psyche are very much a part of the conversation.
The Speakers
Lisa Marchiano: co-chair. A Jungian analyst and author of Motherhood: Facing and Finding Yourself, The Vital Spark, and the forthcoming The Dreamwork Deck. She is coauthor of Dream Wise: Unlocking the Meaning of Your Dreams and a co-host of the podcast This Jungian Life. Her writing has appeared in peer-reviewed journals including Psychological Perspectives and the Journal of Analytical Psychology. She is on the faculty of the C. G. Jung Institute of Philadelphia and is a doctoral candidate at the Boston Graduate School for Psychoanalysis, where she is studying social media and mental health.
Aaron Balick: co-chair. Psychotherapist, author, and Honorary Senior Lecturer in the Department of Psychosocial and Psychoanalytic Studies at the University of Essex. Founding member and former chair of The Relational School, UK. His book The Psychodynamics of Social Networking was among the first to apply psychoanalytic theory to social media. He writes the Substack Depth Psychology in the Digital Age and works through his framework of Applied Psychodynamics.
Todd Essig: Faculty and Training and Supervising Psychoanalyst at the William Alanson White Institute, and Faculty at the NYU Postdoctoral Program in Psychoanalysis. He founded and chairs the American Psychoanalytic Association’s Presidential Commission on Artificial Intelligence, where he created CAI Conversations, CAI Currents and the CAI Report, and serves on the International Psychoanalytical Association’s AI subcommittee. He wrote “Managing Mental Wealth” for Forbes for ten years, and is widely acknowledged as a pioneer in the creative uses of mental health technologies.
Alessandra Lemma: Fellow of the British Psychoanalytic Society and a Chartered Clinical and Counselling Psychologist. Visiting Professor in the Psychoanalysis Unit at University College London, Consultant Clinical Psychologist at the Anna Freud Centre, and Visiting Professor at Centro Winnicott, Rome. Formerly Head of Psychology and Professor of Psychological Therapies at the Tavistock Clinic. Recipient of the 2022 Sigourney Award and the British Psychoanalytic Council’s 2025 Bernard Rattigan Award. Her most recent book is Psychotechnical Becomings: Psychoanalysis, Identity, Desire and Mourning in Times of AI and Digital Mediation (Routledge, 2026).
James Muldoon: Research Fellow at the Oxford Internet Institute and author of Love Machines: How Artificial Intelligence is Transforming our Relationships.
Glen Slater: Long-time member of the core faculty at Pacifica Graduate Institute and currently Associate Chair of the Jungian and Archetypal Psychology Program. Author of Jung vs Borg: Finding the Deeply Human in a Posthuman Age, winner of the International Association of Jungian Studies 2025 Book of the Year Award. Editor of the third volume of James Hillman’s Uniform Edition, Senex and Puer, and co-editor of Varieties of Mythic Experience.
Zak Stein: Trained at the interface of philosophy, psychology and education, and now working in fields related to mitigating global catastrophic risk. Founder and executive director of the AI Psychological Research Coalition, and co-founder of three non-profits. Author of Education in a Time Between Worlds: Essays on the Future of Schools, Technology, and Society.
The Details
Date:
Thursday, 8 October 2026
Time:
7:00pm (UK) / 2:00pm (EDT) - running for two hours.
Format:
Online, panel discussion followed by open conversation with participants.
Cost: Free
This multi-disciplinary event is generously sponsored by the This Jungian Life Podcast.