"Can a robot perform psychoanalysis?"

The question I will pursue over the course of my research is 'can a robot perform psychoanalysis?'. The anticipated answer from a psychoanalyst is 'never!', while the answer from computer engineer would be 'inevitably'. To answer this question I am researching contemporary artificial intelligence, its history and applications, and the possibility of electronic 'self-awareness'. I am exploring the psychoanalytic question of what it is to be a subject, and whether this status is exclusive to humans. Additionally I am researching the split between clinical and theoretical psychoanalysis, and the effects that each domain has on the other as a consequence of this split.

The commencement of this research will follow from my current studies concerning Freudian and Lacanian theory, specifically the linguistic and temporal subject of the unconscious; my analysis of distinction between clinical and theoretical psychoanalysis; critical theory of technology and historical materialism. My research will involve analysis of contemporary artificial intelligence development and the historical conditions which have proceeded from mass automation of industrial processes. I will conduct research into and develop a model of psychoanalysis as it is performed clinically and compare this procedure with its increasingly academicised theoretical counterpart. After establishing the distinction between these two domains, I will then explore the consequences of this distinction and its relation to the possibility of automated, computer preformed clinical psychoanalysis This research will be undertaken with reference to the historical conditions in which we find ourselves, and with the acknowledgment that any theory which attempts to model those conditions is also invariably a symptom and a product of those conditions.