Dartmouth researchers have published the results of the first-ever clinical trial of a generative AI-powered therapy chatbot. The software resulted in significant improvement in participants' symptoms - people in the study reported they could trust and communicate with the system to a degree that is comparable to working with a mental health professional. The study showed that AI has the potential to provide real-time support for the many people who lack regular or immediate access to a mental health professional. While there is no replacement for in-person care, there are nowhere near enough providers available - generative AI could help the huge number of people outside of the in-person care system.

SATURDAY MEMORY

March 22, 2025

Many years ago, I was having lunch with Laurens van der Post during his visit to Los Angeles. We were at the Santa Monica Hotel in Santa Monica, California. I do not remember the year, but it was before he was knighted. We talked of many things during that lunch, but one thing stood out in my memory this week. I had asked him what was the most important thing he learned from the Kalahari Bushmen. He thought for a good while and then said, “to tend to the small.”

I asked him what he meant and for an example. He said, “Well, if you are crouching down and looking for the lion, you are likely to become lunch. You must tend to what the plants are doing, what the bugs on the ground are doing, and changes in the air. That will protect you and guide you.”

A powerful lesson that I have spent many years trying to learn.

SATURDAY MEMORY

March 8, 2025

It was 1943, and it was the day before my fifth birthday. My Mom said that Patsy, one of our cats, might have kittens for my birthday. That night, I woke up around midnight. Patsy was on the bed with me, the top bunk. She was having kittens and I watched this with total fascination. She had four kittens and I named each one at once: Popper, Topper, Hopper and Flopper. I chose names that could be for both male and female kittens. I didn’t know how one knew whether they were males or females. This very potent experience may have had something to do with the genesis of my first publication, which was a limerick I wrote in the third grade:

I once had a cow named Madie

She looked like my old wife Sadie

To give milk she wouldn’t

I found out she couldn’t

For Madie was not a lady

Later, when I was 10 times older, I watched our cow, Cathy, give birth to a calf around midnight. Total fascination.

Saturday Memory

February 22, 2025

My dad was a bookie. One of the high points of this when I was a kid was that I got to know the jockeys at Hollywood Park and Santa Anita Race Track. Johnny Longdon, Billie Shoemaker, Edie Arcaro and many others. They all called me “Red” because I had red hair at the time. The time that stands out as most important was on July 14,1951. We were at Hollywood Park and we were excited to see Citation run in the Gold Cup. Citation was our favorite horse. My dad bet a large amount on Citation, promising me a 10% cut.

Citation did win, and winning this purse made him the first million dollar horse in history.

We were overjoyed and we grabbed each other and danced around in celebration. As we did this I began to realize that this was a bittersweet moment, as I started to experience the “end of childhood.” I never danced with my father again.

The “end of childhood” gained more steam a bit later in the summer when I read Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger. The effect on me was profound.

SATURDAY MEMORY
February 15, 2025

Hotel in Toronto. In the seventies as I recall. I leave the hotel and fetch a taxi to take me to where I will give a lecture. As the taxi pulls up, I’m aware of a man who has come up beside me. I recognize him at once and he recognizes me as well as we have met before when I have talked in Toronto. It is Robertson Davies, premier Canadian author and an aficionado of things Jungian. In the cab we got to talking about various tings and at one point he said, “Russ, do you believe in reincarnation.” The question was totally out of the blue and unrelated to what we were talking about. I told him that I did not believe in reincarnation. He said that he did not either. Everyone he met who believed such stuff he said, “had a much better life previously than the one then have now. No one has ever told me about a wretched previous life. It’s all rubbish.” I don’t remember what else we talked about, but this memory has stuck like glue.

SATURDAY MEMORY
February 8, 2025

When I was on the Board of the C. G. Jung Foundation of New York, back in the late 70s, Mary Bancroft, the Grande Dame of the New York scene, took me under her wing and said I needed to meet influential people. Mary was a novelist, journalist, and a spy as well as one of the most influential supporters of the work of C. G. Jung. She had relationships with many notable men, including Allen Dulles, the main figure in American intelligence and later head of the CIA. Mary connected Dulles with Jung who developed a psychological profile of Adolf Hitler.

One party at Mary’s apartment that stands out in my memory was one where she introduced me to Norman Mailer. She told me I could use some of his qualities. I had read some of his work and I knew that he did most of his writing in the bathtub. It was that I focused on in talking with him and this got us discussinhing some of the quirky habits that writers develop to facilitate their writing.

SATURDAY MEMORY
February 2, 2025

Near midnight. In a bathroom at Dallas International Airport. My last moments in Washington, D.C., were spent visiting the Library of Congress. As souvenirs I had purchased facsimile copies of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. They were in out-sized folders, too big for my suitcase, so I curried them with me.

As I was about the leave the bathroom, five guys came in. They spotted what I was carrying. They could see the large print on one of the folders: Bill of Rights. They started to hassle me. “You got no rights here fucker.” Each one said something similar. I tried to push my way through them, and they started to push me back and toward one of the stalls. Just as they were pushing me, a security guard came in. He ordered them out and they left.

He said, “You wanna live the night, my friend, you’d better toss those.”

I didn’t toss them, but I did turn the folder around so the words could not be seen. “I think I’ll be OK now,” I said.

He escorted me out and the toughs were nowhere to be seen.

I lived to tell the tale.

SATURDAY MEMORY
January 25, 2024

I was eight years old. I was in Dr. Dixon’s office to have my tonsils out. The operation was a success, and I asked Dr. Dixon to show me my tonsils. At first he refused, but I was insistent. He finally showed me a glass jar with a lump of tissue about the size of walnuts. I told Dr. Dixon I wanted to keep the tonsils so I could dissect them and look at them with my microscope. At that age, I was a little scientist and had a laboratory with chemistry stuff, an entomology collection, microscopes, home-made telescopes, cameras, and the like. I even published “The Tech Observer,” which included articles and pictures of various scientific projects. My buddy and I sold these issues to parents and neighbors.

Dr. Dixon said no.

So I kicked him.

The glass jar fell to the floor, and Dr. Dixon’s hand was hurt.

Though my parents always wanted me to be a doctor, even at that age, I didn’t really want to be a doctor until I had kicked Dr. Dixon. Then, I was on a path to be a doctor until my junior year in college. I was in pre-med.

I woke up one morning and was hit with the realization that no, I was not to be a doctor.

When I announced that I was changing to psychology (why this, I did not know and still don’t), my parents were hurt, and I lost my girl friend and my best friend. But I was following something I could not deny, and I did not know why. But I was impelled.

SATURDAY MEMORY

January 18, 2025

From 1961 through 1963, while in graduate school, I worked at the John Tracy Clinic. This was a clinic started by Louise Treadwell Tracy, the wife of Spencer Tracy, in 1942, to do research and establish treatment and educational programs for young children suffering various forms of deafness, in honor of their son, John, who developed nerve deafness at a young age. My work involved using the galvanic skin response (GSR) as a means of testing the hearing of the young patients brought to the clinic. My work illustrated how the GSR was a very sensitive indicator of hearing and could be used in developing approaches to dealing with deafness, particularly in relation to learning language through various means.

I enjoyed working with the kids. I also enjoyed meeting Louise Treadwell Tracy a number of times as well as Katherine Hepburn on two occasions. My conversations with them focused entirely on the research I was doing. They did not mention, nor did I ask anything, about Spencer Tracy.