Loving What Can't Love You Back:

The Use and Misuse of AI In and Out of the Treatment Room

Heather deCastro, LCSW

Sunday, January 24, 2027

10:00am-12:00pm EST

Live Interactive via Zoom

Zoom Invite Will be Sent to Registrants on January 23, 2027

2 CEs offered for Counselors, Psychologists and Social Workers

CEs accepted by many states - check with your local boards.

Heather deCastro, LCSW

Heather deCastro, LCSW, is a psychoanalyst in private practice in New York and the founder of Millennium Psychotherapy. She has written and taught on psychoanalysis and technology since 2012. She teaches courses on AI and the clinical frame at the Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy Study Center (PPSC), following ten years at the Training Institute for Mental Health as faculty, supervisor, Assistant Director of Training, and co-chair of its Psychoanalytic Society.

She serves on the American Psychoanalytic Association (APsA) President’s Commission on Artificial Intelligence and writes for CAI Currents, the Council’s column in The American Psychoanalyst. She has presented at AAPCSW on Feminizing Freud: Women's Contributions to Psychoanalysis' Evolution and will present at McLean Hospital’s Technology in Psychiatry Summit (TIPS) in December 2026.

Her current work examines the human–AI dyad: AI companions, simulated transference, and what AI changes in the therapeutic relationship.

Workshop Description

Patients now arrive in treatment already in relationship with AI. They confide in chatbots between sessions, bring in AI-generated explanations of their lives, and describe companion apps as their closest friends. Starting from bell hooks’s distinction between cathexis and love, this program asks what it means to attach to something that cannot love back.

Participants learn a working clinical vocabulary for AI, examine why fluent language makes us imagine a mind behind the words, and compare psychoanalytic concepts of the third as they apply to AI in treatment. The program then turns to the clinical frame: time, friction, separateness, and fee. A detailed case presentation shows how a patient’s AI use enters the treatment and how the clinician works with it.

Learning Objectives

Upon completion of this program, participants will be able to:

1. Distinguish cathexis from love, drawing on Freud and bell hooks, and apply the distinction to patients’ attachments to AI.
2. Describe the difference between intelligence and consciousness, and explain why patients experience AI as having a mind.
3. Compare psychoanalytic concepts of the third and describe how they inform our understanding of transference and countertransference when patients use AI.
4. Identify two ways a patient’s AI use alters the clinical frame, applied to case material.

Target Audience:  Suitable for Psychologists, Social Workers, Licensed Professional Counselors, Psychiatrists, Advanced Practice Nurses, Graduate Students, Marriage and Family Therapists.

Level of Sophistication: This is an introductory level post-graduate continuing education program suitable for all levels of training.

ADA accommodations available upon request (Required at least 14 days prior to course start date).

2 Continuing Education Credits

Counselors: CPPNJ has been approved by NBCC as an Approved Continuing Education Provider, ACEP No. 6863. Programs that do not qualify for NBCC credit are clearly identified. CPPNJ is solely responsible for all aspects of the programs.

Psychologists: CPPNJ is approved by the American Psychological Association to sponsor continuing education for psychologists. CPPNJ maintains responsibility for this program and its contents.

NY Psychologists: Center for Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis of New Jersey is recognized by the New York State Education Department’s State Board for Psychology as an approved provider of continuing education for licensed psychologists #PSY-0165. 

Social Workers: Center for Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis of New Jersey is recognized by the New York State Education Department's State Board for Social Work as an approved provider of continuing education for licensed social workers #SW-0757.

The New Jersey Board of Social Work Examiners, and some other state boards, recognize CEs approved by the New York State Education Department.

Cost: Members $70/$80 pre-registration by January 10; CPPNJ Candidates: $30; Students with ID: $25; Non-Members $100/$110 pre-registration by January 10.

Cancellations made prior to three days (72 hours) before the event will receive a full refund minus a $25 administrative fee.  Cancellations made less than 72 hours before the event will be given a refund of half of the registration fees. Refunds will NOT be granted for cancellation requests made on the day of the event.

There is no potential conflict of interest and/or commercial support for this CE event.



For more information or registration, please call 973-912-4432, visit us online at www.cppnj.org, contact us by email at cppnj@cppnj.org or at CPPNJ 235 Main St, Madison, NJ 07940