From Craft to Labor: How Automation is Transforming the Practice of Psychotherapy

I argue that the emergence of ICBT (Internet Cognitive Behavioral Therapy), a novel computerized psychotherapeutic intervention, heralds a shift in the status of psychotherapy from craft to labor. Psychotherapy, as is practiced commonly today, retains its status as craft; therapists in managed settings still work within what I term an opaque bubble, their work invisible and uninterrupted, even by their immediate supervisors and managers. The therapists participating in the Israeli Ministry of Health’s course training the first cohort of ‘online therapists’ find themselves in uncharted territory: The automation of psychotherapy in the form of ICBT constitutes the profession’s first major ‘division of labor,’ not only minimizing the role of the human therapists, but rendering their craft transparent and controllable in ways previously unimaginable. This shift is theorized as a transition from a workmanship of risk, to a workmanship of certainty, and the potential degradation of therapists’ skills and status is explored.