Artificial Intelligence applications and psychology: an overview.

Psychotherapy endows a sense of control in patients gripped with emotional conflicts which allow them to handle their reflexes and regain composure through conscious and behavioral alterations. These transformational changes can be brought about by improving their listening skills, observational capacities, creating awareness, making them more attentive and intervening. Conventional psychotherapy calls for one-to-one sessions during treatment. Considering the increased access to information technology in our normal living, the thought of human interaction being replaced by IT tools came to existence. Specialized tools and techniques are employed through the course of therapy which not only alters but also accentuates their cognitive and effective understanding. The idea of amalgamating these two broad ambits - the complexities of psychology and dynamism of artificial intelligence has gained momentum in recent times. The previous reluctance of a few psychologists regarding inculcating expert systems into routine practice due to maybe employment-related insecurities or being swapped by a computer led to underutilization of the latent competence of using IT. Primarily, human behavior itself cannot be copied in totality by technology, and AI has a great deal to cover in this regards, but researchers are doing their best to deliver on these premises. Apart from this patient resistance to this encroachment of technology should also be looked at critically for gaining mass acceptance. This review focuses on how machine intelligence through computer-implemented psychotherapeutic tools can enhance self-awareness.