AI leaders openly admit uncertainty about the societal impact ahead.

To be a psychotherapist is to hold the souls of clients with a holy reverence.

Therapy offers disciplined, non-anxious presence amid upheaval.

Compassionate witnessing restores agency in destabilizing times.

In a world on the cusp of massive change, uncertainty, and complexity due to artificial intelligence, I believe it’s necessary to remind everyone of what psychotherapy actually means, because its human-centered importance is more needed now than ever.

The word psychotherapy originates from two ancient Greek roots: psyche, meaning “soul,” and therapia, meaning “healing” or “tending to.” I can’t stress the meaning of combining these two words enough.

To be a psychotherapist in the truest sense of the word is to care for and tend to the human soul.

The human soul, which so far as we know, did not ask to be incarnated or created in flesh and bone. No one consulted the human soul before it was thrust into a random set of human circumstances. No human soul chose its parents, its genetics, or the geographic location it would be born into with all of its political, social, and economic implications. No human soul chose its race or ethnicity, its biological sex, its sexual orientation, or how well its body would function. The human soul doesn’t choose whether the family it was born into would be marked by love and belonging or bitterness and........

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