On June 11, 2022, The Washington Post published the story of a Google engineer who claimed that LaMBDA, the company’s proprietary artificial intelligence—or, more precisely, its “conversational large language model”—had shown signs of “sentience.” Blake Lemoine, who was then working for Google’s Responsible AI organization, engaged in daily conversations (you can read one of those conversations here) with the chatbot, which eventually led him to believe he was talking to a self-conscious being.
In January 2025, Stanford University published a blog post announcing that they had successfully simulated the personalities of 1,052 individuals using their AI. After a two-hour interview with the AI, each simulated personality completed both the General Social Survey and the 44-item Big Five Inventory alongside its corresponding human counterpart. The simulated personalities matched their real counterparts’ answers 88% of the time on the General Social Survey and 80% of the time on the Big Five Inventory.
In 2017, clinical research psychologist Dr. Alison Darcy founded Woebot Health, a company dedicated to developing mental health chatbots to support psychological well-being. On the user page of their website, they claim to provide “actionable advice” and teach “proven ways to better cope in the future.” They state that their AI can help “boost confidence,” “gain clarity,” “change thought patterns,” and “understand your emotions”—all for a minimal fee to maximize accessibility.
Our awareness of these developments in AI, combined with Silvia’s commentary, has convinced us that we must provide ISTFP members with an overview of how this technological advancement could profoundly change our practice and daily lives. Furthermore, since its development raises many questions about sentience, artificial personality, and computer-driven psychotherapy, we will explore whether Kernberg’s object relations theory can help answer some of them.
Are AI systems sentient, conscious entities with personalities? Will they one day replace TFP therapists?
We are a community of experts on personality—let’s assess whether, referring to the debate spawned by Descartes, there is a “ghost in the machine.”
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Mathieu Norton-Poulin, M.Ps.
Mathieu Norton-Poulin is a psychologist in private practice in Gatineau, Québec. He graduated from Laval University in 1995 and started his training in transference focused psychotherapy in 2005. Member of the TFP-Québec group he as been practicing has a certified TFP therapist for the last 9 years. Since 2009 he organized several training events and has given lectures on TFP for medical doctors and college students. He maintains a blog where he write, in plain words, articles to explain TFP to the general public.
Ps. Veronica Steiner
Veronica Steiner Segal is a Chilean clinical psychologist who graduated in 1998. Since her beginnings she has been working with patients with Severe Personality Disorders in different health institutions in her country, and since 2018 she is a certified TFP therapist. In 2019 she obtained her accreditation as a teacher and supervisor. Since the same year she is coordinator of Grupo TFP Chile. She is the Executive Officer for the Board and she collaborates with the T&E Committee. She also teaches at the University of Valparaiso, in the Department of Psychiatry, where she also teaches in the Diploma of Severe Personality Disorders.
She collaborates in different courses looking for the diffusion of TFP. Together with Luis Valenciano and Pepa Gonzalez she directs an important training in TFP for Spanish speaking students, Instituto TFP Hispanoamerica.