I was startled to see how quickly and how very deeply people conversing with DOCTOR became emotionally involved with the computer and how unequivocally they anthropomorphized it. Once my secretary, who had watched me work on the program for many months and therefore surely knew it to be merely a computer program, started conversing with it. After only a few interchanges with it, she asked me to leave the room. Another time, I suggested I might rig the system so that I could examine all conversations anyone had had with it, say, overnight. I was promptly bombarded with accusations that what I proposed amounted to spying on people's most intimate thoughts; clear evidence that people were conversing with the computer as if it were a person who could be appropriately and usefully addressed in intimate terms. I knew of course that people form all sorts of emotional bonds to machines, for example, to musical instruments. Motorcycles, and cars.

And I knew from long experience that the strong emotional ties many programmers have to their computers are often formed after only short exposures to their machines. What I had not realized is that extremely short exposures to a relatively simple computer program could induce powerful delusional thinking in quite normal people. This insight led me to attach new importance to questions of the relationship between the individual and the computer. And hence to resolve to think about them.

- Joseph Weizenbaum, "Computer Power and Human Reason"

 

The article "Computer Power and Human Reason" in theNewMediaReader, by Joseph Weizenbaum is an in depth explanation of interactive fictions and artificial intelligence through the use of computer programs, such as ELIZA or DOCTOR, simulations of real therapists designed to diagnose problems in patents through a range of pre-programmed responses and open ended questions.

In this exert from the article, Weizenbaum is discussing the varied responses people had to the program DOCTOR, and expressing his hypothesis that it is natural and easy for humans to form bonds with material, non-sentient objects, such as cars, toys, and computer programs.

His first argument is used to show how people form bonds with things such as cars and computer programmes, by giving them human characteristics, such as referring to them as a he (DOCTOR) or a she (ELIZA), rather than an it (a computer program), this is also seen in the naming of cars by their owners, and the naming of, and personalities assigned to children’s teddy bears.

Weizenbaum then goes on to give a few examples of how a completely normal, sane, successful and intelligent person can from rather intimate bonds with such computer programs. Such as Weizenbaum’s secretary, who obviously new the DOCTOR program was just a program, as she had worked with/for Weizenbaum while he designed it, and yet after a surprisingly short time with DOCTOR, requested that Weizenbaum leave them alone.

A similar occurrence was when he was scolded about respecting peoples privacy, when he suggested recording the discussions people had with the program. This suggests a new level of closeness, when someone can share private intimate conversations with a one sided, artificial Doctor.

Thus proving Weizenbaum’s thesis that people are willing to bond with artificial objects, raising the questions of are people open to a growth in such programs, would people be willing to put their mental health in the hands of a computer programme, and is that in itself proof that some people need real psychoanalysis.