iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Reposted by Aaron Balick 🍉

Aitor @aitorpesquera.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

🧵 El sábado compartí mesa en el Festival de las Ideas con el psicoterapeuta Aaron Balick. El tema: qué le hace la IA a nuestra psique. Me quedé con un concepto que no puedo dejar de pensar: la "seducción relacional".

101

Reposted by Aaron Balick 🍉

Aaron Balick 🍉 @aaronbalick.com · 17/09/2026

What happens at the interface between bodies and machines? Check out my latest substack exploring embodiment and AI: newsletter.aaronbalick.com/p/does-your-...

011

Aaron Balick 🍉 @aaronbalick.com · 17/09/2026

What happens at the interface between bodies and machines? Check out my latest substack exploring embodiment and AI: newsletter.aaronbalick.com/p/does-your-...

011

Reposted by Aaron Balick 🍉

Aaron Balick 🍉 @aaronbalick.com · 10/09/2026

If AI did “recursive self improvement” as badly as humans do, we’d never be at risk for species-wide extinction.

021

Aaron Balick 🍉 @aaronbalick.com · 10/09/2026

If AI did “recursive self improvement” as badly as humans do, we’d never be at risk for species-wide extinction.

021

Aaron Balick 🍉 @aaronbalick.com · 09/09/2026

"Experience is not what happens to a man; it is what a man does with what happens to him". - Aldous Huxley

120

Aaron Balick 🍉 @aaronbalick.com · 07/09/2026

The moment you realise you’ve been using three separate versions of the same document to revise the a chapter of a single book - and all your carefully crafted edits are now scattered, willy nilly, across across all of them.

100

Reposted by Aaron Balick 🍉

Aaron Balick 🍉 @aaronbalick.com · 30/08/2026

Paul Simon on loneliness (depression ?) when he was at the top of is game, musically, shortly after solo artist: “The [first] marriage didn’t solve the loneliness. I knew right away I had made a mistake. I didn’t know how to be a good companion. I wasn’t a very mature person. 1/7

112

Aaron Balick 🍉 @aaronbalick.com · 30/08/2026

It was followed by “Still Crazy After All These Years.”

000

Aaron Balick 🍉 @aaronbalick.com · 30/08/2026

“I was unable to absorb the bounty that was in my life. Even when people would say a simple statement that I used to hear countless times - Hey, man, I love your music’ - you’d think that I’d begin to feel something good about my music, right? … I would ignore. Totally ignore it.” Do you relate? 7/7

100

Aaron Balick 🍉 @aaronbalick.com · 30/08/2026

“…Being short. Not having a voice that you want. Not looking the way you want to look. Having a bad relationship. Some of that is real. And if you start to roll it together, that’s what you focus on. 6/7

100

Aaron Balick 🍉 @aaronbalick.com · 30/08/2026

‘Gee, if I admit that things are actually going well, maybe they’ll stop.’ Or ‘If I admit I’m happy, maybe I won’t be able to write.’ I think the psyche comes up with all kinds of contrivances to protect what it thinks is vulnerable. successful and doing well, because look at how unhappy I am.’ 5/7

100

Aaron Balick 🍉 @aaronbalick.com · 30/08/2026

And sometimes those contrivances are that you stay in a state of unhappiness. Or victimization. It’s almost saying, ‘Hey, don’t get mad at me for being so And I’m disregarding the rest of the picture.’ There’s something in me—in a lot of people—that says, 4/7

100

Aaron Balick 🍉 @aaronbalick.com · 30/08/2026

“Most people look at me and wonder, ‘How could that guy be depressed?’ And I now feel that people were seeing a more accurate picture of me than I was. I eventually realized, ‘Jesus, all I’ve been looking at is this thin slice of pie that has got the bad news in it. 2/3

100

Aaron Balick 🍉 @aaronbalick.com · 30/08/2026

“I didn’t understand that you had to work at problems. I wanted the marriage to solve my problems.” 2/7

100

Aaron Balick 🍉 @aaronbalick.com · 30/08/2026

112

Reposted by Aaron Balick 🍉

Aaron Balick 🍉 @aaronbalick.com · 26/08/2026

What happens where a real psychologist shrinks comedians’s heads directly after their sets in from of 200 people at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival? Is it even ethical? It was definitely funny - here aremy thoughts: substack.com/@draaronb/no...

substack.com

Aaron Balick (@draaronb)

001

Aaron Balick 🍉 @aaronbalick.com · 26/08/2026

substack.com

Aaron Balick (@draaronb)

001

Aaron Balick 🍉 @aaronbalick.com · 26/08/2026

Shrink Wrapped review from the Edinburgh festival: What happens when you do a bit of psychotherapy in a public forum for laughs? It’s complicated - but also really really funny. open.substack.com/pub/appliedp...

010

Reposted by Aaron Balick 🍉

Aaron Balick 🍉 @aaronbalick.com · 23/08/2026

What? The first summit on AI and Depth Psychology? And it’s free? Join Lisa Marchiano and I as we host this exciting event with some of the most original thinkers in this area including: Todd Essig, Alessandra Lemma, James Muldoon, Glen Slater, and Zachary Stein. us06web.zoom.us/webinar/regi...

us06web.zoom.us

Welcome! You are invited to join a webinar: Artificial Intelligence and the Psyche: The First Summit on Depth Psychology and AI. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email about joining ...

Never before have we had a technology that performs being human so well. What might this be doing to the psyche? People are already forming attachments to these systems, confiding in them, dreaming a...

001

Reposted by Aaron Balick 🍉

Aaron Balick 🍉 @aaronbalick.com · 17/08/2026

“It still strikes me as strange that the case histories I write should read like short stories and that … they lack the serious stamp of science. I must console myself with the reflection that the nature of the subject is evidently responsible for this, rather than any preference of my own.” - Freud

051

Aaron Balick 🍉 @aaronbalick.com · 17/08/2026

051

Reposted by Aaron Balick 🍉

Aaron Balick 🍉 @aaronbalick.com · 16/08/2026

The Self has a big “S”. The ego has a small “e”. But the ego thinks it’s got the capital letter. It’s wrong. It also thinks it’s the whole show: it’s not. Get better acquainted with your Self - there’s so much more room there. Only the Self speaks more quietly than the noisy ego, so listen in.

041

Aaron Balick 🍉 @aaronbalick.com · 16/08/2026

041

Reposted by Aaron Balick 🍉

Aaron Balick 🍉 @aaronbalick.com · 11/08/2026

The structure of the digitally mediated landscape leans us into the paranoid/schizoid. In order to reclaim the sovereign psyche, we need to retain the depressive position. 1/2

231

Aaron Balick 🍉 @aaronbalick.com · 11/08/2026

The Kleinian language may sound grim - but the capacity to create space for nuance under the constant inundation of powerfully influential stimulus - is the most optimistic thing we can do. open.substack.com/pub/appliedp...

open.substack.com

The Sovereign Psyche: How AI erodes a mind of your own

Your data should be sovereign. So should what you let inside your mind.

020

Aaron Balick 🍉 @aaronbalick.com · 11/08/2026

The structure of the digitally mediated landscape leans us into the paranoid/schizoid. In order to reclaim the sovereign psyche, we need to retain the depressive position. 1/2

231

Aaron Balick 🍉 @aaronbalick.com · 11/08/2026

Worse, we respond to the realities that our brains construct largely by repeating behaviors that worked for similar situations in the vanished world of childhood but that no longer bear any resemblance to the behavior of a sane adult.” This is one worth reading: www.nytimes.com/2026/08/09/o... 3/3

nytimes.com

Opinion | Therapy Needs Therapy. Neuroscience Can Help.

The good news is that the neuroscience of perception can pave the way out.

030

Aaron Balick 🍉 @aaronbalick.com · 11/08/2026

Neuroscience describes predictive processing similarly. “For the rest of our lives, in every exchange with everyone who matters to us, our brains construct reality — by which I mean we quite literally see other people and ourselves — based on childhood experiences that we cannot even recall. 2/3

110

Aaron Balick 🍉 @aaronbalick.com · 11/08/2026

Way back in 1885 Freud noticed something in his patients that would form the bedrock of psychotherapy, “Hysterics suffer mainly from reminiscences”. It’s our memories from the past that haven’t quite caught up to the present that compel us to repeat patterns that don’t work for us. 1/3

140

Aaron Balick 🍉 @aaronbalick.com · 07/08/2026

People need structure. We crave not having it, but in the end we need it. At least some.

090

Aaron Balick 🍉 @aaronbalick.com · 05/08/2026

Perhaps I lowered the sycophancy setting too low. Claude sends me to bed after a slightly drunken rant, insults my beard, and then unequivocally “rolls over” in bed performing of the universal human tactic of avoidance we call sleep.

010

Reposted by Aaron Balick 🍉

Aaron Balick 🍉 @aaronbalick.com · 04/08/2026

Can we have a “sovereign psyche” in a world of ubiquitous AI engagement? Join my discussion with Graeme Scott where we explore the influence of Artificial Intelligence on the human psyche. youtube.com/watch?v=CL6Y...

youtube.com

GAEA Talks - The Sovereign Psyche: AI Chatbots & The Currency of Fear with Dr Aaron Balick

YouTube video by GAEA Talks

011

Aaron Balick 🍉 @aaronbalick.com · 04/08/2026

youtube.com

GAEA Talks - The Sovereign Psyche: AI Chatbots & The Currency of Fear with Dr Aaron Balick

YouTube video by GAEA Talks

011

Aaron Balick 🍉 @aaronbalick.com · 02/08/2026

If the affective temperature rises above this level, the possibility of reason's having any effect ceases and its place is taken by slogans and chimerical wish-fantasies. That is to say, a sort of collective possession results which rapidly develops into a psychic epidemic.” - C.G. Jung 2/2

010

Aaron Balick 🍉 @aaronbalick.com · 02/08/2026

“Rational argument can be conducted with some prospect of success only so long as the emotionality of a given situation does not exceed a certain critical degree… 1/2

100

Aaron Balick 🍉 @aaronbalick.com · 31/07/2026

Highlighting on my kindle and exporting to Readwise is super convenient and keeps all my notes and highlights on one place. I still prefer analogue underlining my books and writing in the margins - even though the only way to keep track of my notes is to go back and take the book off the shelf.

150

Reposted by Aaron Balick 🍉

Aaron Balick 🍉 @aaronbalick.com · 29/07/2026

“Good enough” and “false self” are two Winnicottian concepts that are as excellent in conception as they are misunderstood in practice.

011

Aaron Balick 🍉 @aaronbalick.com · 29/07/2026

“Good enough” and “false self” are two Winnicottian concepts that are as excellent in conception as they are misunderstood in practice.

011

Aaron Balick 🍉 @aaronbalick.com · 25/07/2026

Last month it was “the quiet part said out loud” now everything is “quietly doing something.” The AI phrasing that quietly becomes omnipresent is quietly driving me crazy. Am I the only one?

000

Reposted by Aaron Balick 🍉

Aaron Balick 🍉 @aaronbalick.com · 23/07/2026

Lacan said that the unconscious was structured like a language. No doubt were he around to see an LLM he’d have a spontaneous jouissance.

011

Aaron Balick 🍉 @aaronbalick.com · 23/07/2026

AI may be a repository of knowledge, but wisdom is altogether different.

010

Aaron Balick 🍉 @aaronbalick.com · 23/07/2026

Lacan said that the unconscious was structured like a language. No doubt were he around to see an LLM he’d have a spontaneous jouissance.

011

Reposted by Aaron Balick 🍉

Aaron Balick 🍉 @aaronbalick.com · 22/07/2026

The terror of the empty page… The paralysis that ensues… Overcoming it is part of the process. Don’t short circuit your creative process. You know what I’m saying. “It’s about self-expression, not just expressing something.“ (See what I did there?😉)

011