The intoxication of immediacy: psychiatrist’s reflections on algorithmic psychiatry

Summary The rapid integration of artificial intelligence into psychiatric practice poses a profound yet under-examined threat to core clinical faculties. Drawing on ‘cognitive debt’, this article explores the ‘atrophy’ of the psychiatric encounter. By collapsing temporality and saturating uncertainty with instant information, artificial intelligence disrupts the capacity to tolerate ambivalence and dwell in the unknown. Referencing Jaspers’ ‘incomprehensible void’ and Laing’s ‘ontological insecurity’, the author argues that the current ‘intoxication of immediacy’ may recast psychiatrists as executors of algorithms. At this fleeting vantage point, psychoanalysis offers one frame within which erosion of the clinical self may be recognised and resisted.