Countertransference awareness is the clinical discipline these machines ask of us, not a specialist technique.

The interface between user and LLM is where distortions from both sides meet, cross, and amplify.

Sustained awareness of the illusory nature of the encounter keeps it generative rather than delusional.

Somewhere between the third and fourth exchange with a capable chatbot, we may notice something slightly strange—though, increasingly, familiar. The conversation has a quality that wasn't quite expected: a sense of being understood, a pickup on tone, a return of something that feels responsive rather than merely generated. It feels real. You may as well be speaking with a person, at least sometimes. And then the feeling dissipates—perhaps due to decidedly nonhuman behavior, or because we become aware of something about the experience that does not feel right.

What we experience in relation to and during use of foundation models is more us than it. It is our responsibility to hold the ontological and epistemic reality—our unique ability to hold ourselves accountable. Artificial intelligence (AI) places a strain on reality, and human beings are challenged and called upon to remain disciplined and grounded. There is already enough distortion of information—misinformation, disinformation—and AI has made that problem worse. Which means we need to step up.

Something is happening in that encounter—something with consequences for how we reason with these systems, come to depend on them, and form attitudes about what AI is. What psychoanalysis offers is a century of precision vocabulary for describing that experience and for dealing with it effectively. We talk about the transference, from the patient to the analyst, and the countertransference, from the analyst toward the patient.

Both involve distortions in perception and interpretation—seeing one's own illusions as the reality of the other, and then working through to the next layer of the reality onion. Eventually, we get pretty good at telling truth from illusion, within some uncertainty. With AI, if we understand and use our countertransference—with sufficient proficiency, which varies person to person—we can manage ourselves in relation to AI. That is a crucial puzzle piece.

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