03/05/2026
Is this what the future of mental health therapy looks like?
“UberTherapy is the term I use to indicate the fluid and dynamic business models of digital therapy that are being utilized as key health care players start to roll out AI across the mental health sector. The book argues that UberTherapy represents an attack on thinking, offering the new consumers of digital therapy a defense against deep work. It contends that inherent in the automation and iconic design of therapeutic labor processes lies a rejection of complexity and a denial of our dependency on others to explore the unconscious. It sets the goal of therapy low, to finding a simple solution to a simple problem determined by an online survey, your e-commercial history, and credit card details. It is in this way that the design premise of online therapy platforms redefines the therapy problem as one of convenience and choice where therapy can be done anytime from anywhere by anyone. With the emergence of short-term, solution-focused, and ultimately “nonrelational therapies,” we are left with a set of transactional decisions about what kind of therapy to buy online.”
Read Elizabeth Cotton’s ‘Algorithmic Defenses Against Thinking’ (The rise of UberTherapy) @
AmericanPsychoanalyst.Substack.com
Tapmag.org
