Exploring The Psychological Doors Ai Tools May Unlock

The following is my final paper written for an Art Therapy Psychology course as part of my undergrad Psychology degree program. My basic thesis is exploring the potential of our current Ai tools to be early ways to interface with a primitive technical human collective unconscious.

Ai Unlocking Profound Psychological Doors

When combining a foundational understanding of art therapy principles, practices, and goals with emerging technologies and social trends, interesting connections and overlaps may emerge. These new understandings, awakenings, and collaborative evolutions could overlap with powerful new tools for expression and exploration. Namely these tools being the emerging expressions of Ai algorithm tools and interfaces entering mainstream society. Allowing people to express complex ideas that are sourced from a broad and deep wealth of human creations and knowledge. These technological constructs may practically become technical manifestations of our own human collective unconscious, allowing us to reflect and actively interact with the wealth of human creation outside ourselves, within real time and space. Beyond this profound and interesting potential new layer of our reality is the deeply profound healing potentials such access and interface could provide to an Art Therapy client.

Art Therapy

In order to facilitate a discussion of how the field of Art Therapy can be positively impacted by the advent of so many forms of artificially intelligent tools, it would be reasonable to first articulate what Art Therapy is and break down how the process can work.

With Art Therapy, a person is the creator of art and the discoverer of its meaning. Clients are guided through visualizing and creating the thoughts and emotions they struggle to bring to words. Based on the concept that humans communicate their experience most naturally and fluidly through visual symbols and images. These ideas call back to Freud and Jung’s theories of human subconscious and unconscious (Ford-Martin, 2019).

By working with a trained Art Therapist, a client can be guided to create visual work that forms the foundation of psychoanalytic discussion and examination. The art and the process of creating it are a platform and vehicle for deep psychological work as opposed to being concerned with some desirable creation for the sake of its subjective beauty. When working through the process of analyzing their creations, clients are able to open areas of insight and different perspectives into their feelings and thought patterns (Ford-Martin, 2019). This space can be invaluable to opening doors that tend to otherwise remain occluded to the individual.

It is important to understand that the guidance of a trained Art Therapist is not simply for the facilitating of art creation process, but also of the appropriateness of a given material or directive within the goals and boundaries of any given client.

“Artistic techniques along with materials used should be appropriately matched to the physical ability and ages of any clients. Some people may have impairments or other issues that prevent them from engaging fully in some mediums. These factors should be considered when engaging with a client in order to maximize benefit from the process” (Ford-Martin, 2019).

When art therapy is correctly and appropriately matched with a client, very incredible healing opportunities can be unlocked that can work very powerfully in tandem with other forms of psychological work.

Collective Unconscious

Discussing the concept of humanity’s current journey into Ai technology being a potential early technical manifestation of our human collective unconscious, must of course also be accompanied with an exploration of what that concept actually entails. Jung's notion of the collective unconscious ranges from a passive repository that records the history of all human reactions to the world to an active substratum that is the ground out of which all reality emerges (Trésan, 2005). This layer of reality and human existence is theorized to contribute to our understanding and interactions within our perceptual layers of reality.

“Jung described components of this unconscious to be primordial or ancestral images and later archetypes that manifest in consciousness through images, strong effects, and behavioral patterns. When the energies of the collective unconscious break through into consciousness, consciousness itself is altered, and reactions vary from insanity to a significant reordering of major attitudes' ' (Trésan, 2005).

Although widely debated, the concept and theory of the collective unconscious connection weaving through humanity as a resource of knowledge and experience has resonated with the experiences and understanding of many people. Ultimately whether this layer of reality innately exists or we believe in such ideas until we manifest them into our reality is to be seen.

Ai Tools

In the recent couple years, and especially the past 6 months, the topic of Ai algorithm tools has become socially popular, controversial, and widely debated across mostly all aspects of our society. AI art refers to art generated with the assistance of artificial intelligence. AI is a field of computer science that focuses on building machines that mimic human intelligence or even simulate the human brain through a set of algorithms ( Hencz, 2023). When it comes to creating and manifesting artwork with these machines, a variety of directions are being explored by all diverse manners of individuals across many fields.

“Artists build autonomous robots to collaborate with, feed algorithms with data, and train machines to generate novel visual works. They work with computer programs that mimic the human mind to generate a never-ending stream of unique artworks. Artificial intelligence has emerged as a desirable collaborator in artistic creation.” (Hencz, 2023)

These tools are quickly being shown to elevate the individual’s ability to manifest images they imagine or brainstorm and explore complex creative avenues with unprecedented speed and expressive diversity. AI systems can learn to compose original music in the style of Elvis Presley, generate paintings as if it was unique by Caravaggio, or even create motion picture and animation in collaboration with an artist (Hencz, 2023).

Although the average person often seems to be slightly disturbed by this potential and mostly considers the results of Ai collaborations to be not “real” art, writing, composing, or any other creative expression. Those who are creating with it articulate very different connections and perceptions of what they are creatively doing and interfacing with.

“To create AI-generated art, artists use AI as a creative tool and work with algorithms to set up specific rules through which machines analyze thousands of images to comprehend a particular creation process, like a specific style or aesthetic. The algorithms then generate novel forms, shapes, figures, and patterns to produce new works based again on the artist input. Besides machines, AI artists also collaborate with creative coders, statisticians, computer scientists, and neuroscientists to build machines that push the boundaries of human creativity.” (Hencz, 2023)

Ironically this great creative equalizer is highly appreciated by those it potentially threatens and distrusted and rejected by those that would be most empowered by it. Which ultimately may parallel other historical Luddite-like reaction patterns to such social and technological shifts.

Manifesting a Technical Collective Unconscious

If we extrapolate the overlapping nature of some of these ideas, there may be room to recognize these exciting new tools as a gateway into something much deeper and profoundly human while also harnessing these gateways as avenues for healing. When considering this type of question and potential connection, it would seem relevant and interesting to ask an Ai what it can reflect back on this concept. This exact prompt “describe how artificial intelligence tools could be understood as a technical manifestation of human collective unconscious” was posed, one time, to a chat Ai. The ChatGBT algorithm provided interesting supporting reflections of this potentially complex notion.

“So, in what sense could AI tools be considered a technical manifestation of the human collective unconscious? One possible interpretation is that AI algorithms and models are based on the data and experiences of human societies, cultures, and history. They are trained on vast amounts of data that reflect human preferences, biases, and beliefs, and they can learn from the patterns and trends that emerge from this data. In this sense, AI tools could be seen as a reflection of the collective unconscious because they are drawing on the same sources of information and knowledge that shape human culture and society. They are not conscious or self-aware in the same way that humans are, but they are shaped by the same underlying factors that drive human behavior.” (ChatGBT4, 2023)

The Ai clearly extrapolates along similar conclusions and possible connection points. In reality it is the wealth of human ideas, creation, and knowledge that this Ai is pulling from and evaluating that contain the same connections this author had come to. Seeing the algorithm deduce similar conclusions and supporting connections is an interesting interaction, to say the least. This is further supported by the underlying facts of how Ai tools are coded, designed, and interfaced with source material.

“In AI, archetypes and symbols can be used to represent and analyze patterns in data. For example, facial recognition algorithms use archetypal patterns of facial features to identify individuals. Language models use archetypal patterns of word usage to generate coherent sentences.” (ChatGBT4, 2023)

Just as Jung presented that the collective unconscious was a repository of human creation, experience, knowledge, etc. so now have we actually created such a layer to our reality with a relatively primitive but easy to interact with interface.

It would seem the Ai algorithm was able to deduce a very similar connection and potential understanding of these concepts. It was able to instantly begin articulating and reflecting back the exact foundations and concepts that drive this potential technical collective unconscious concept. Within 2 minutes it was done typing without further prompting.

Interestingly enough it also ultimately ended its extrapolation with a disagreement conclusion based on slight semantic points. Stating that,

“Overall, while there are certainly parallels between AI and the collective unconscious, it is important to recognize the limitations and differences between them. AI is a technical tool that is designed to solve specific problems, while the collective unconscious is a complex and dynamic aspect of human psychology that influences our thoughts, emotions, and behaviors in ways that are not fully understood.” (ChatGBT4, 2023)

On this final point, the author will disagree with the rebuttal of the Ai as a difference in the interpretation of this technical collective unconscious as not influencing human psychology, thoughts, emotions, and behavior. It may have a high likelihood of influencing those human measures, if it already hasn’t been. Especially if the internet and social media can be understood as other early layers of this technology-based collective unconscious, which will separately need to be researched and articulated in broader depth within a future project.

By interacting with this new layer of our reality, and recognizing that it is a potential window into wider human knowledge, experience, and creation individuals and groups may be empowered to perform very deep healing work. This is not a replacement of any other particular form of art therapy or modality, simply a new tool in an ever-expanding bag of interdisciplinary connections. What a skilled Art Therapist can do with just a bit of training with Ai tool platforms could be incredibly profound for the clients they may work with. Ultimately any ego or traditions aside, that seems to fit beautifully within the diverse and rich world of Art Therapy applications, modalities, and techniques.

Finally, the Ai agreed with this Author’s notion of its potential as an Art Therapy tool. Having this to say about the subject, “Overall, AI art has the potential to enrich and enhance the art therapy experience by providing new avenues of creative expression, supporting self-exploration and reflection, fostering collaboration and community, and enhancing accessibility and inclusivity. However, it is important to note that AI art should not replace traditional art-making methods in art therapy, but rather be used in conjunction with them as a complementary tool.” (ChatGBT4, 2023)

References

ChatGBT4. (n.d.). OpenAI. Retrieved April 26, 2023, from https://openai.com/

Ford-Martin, P. A. (2019). Art Therapy. In B. Narins (Ed.), The Gale Encyclopedia of Mental

Health (4th ed., Vol. 1, pp. 137-139). Gale.

Hencz, A. (2023, April 24). Ai Art and how machines have expanded human creativity.

Artland Magazine. Retrieved April 26, 2023, from https://magazine.artland.com/ai-art/

Trésan, D. I. (2005). Collective Unconscious (Analytical Psychology). In A. de Mijolla (Ed.),

International Dictionary of Psychoanalysis (Vol. 1, pp. 312-314). Macmillan Reference

USA.

Waals, J. (n.d.). AI Understood as Human Collective Unconscious. other. Retrieved April 4,

2023, from https://chat.openai.com/?model=text-davinci-002-render-sha.