Psychiatry & Psychotherapy Podcast - Murderbot: Schizoid Personality, Neurodivergence, and the Search for Humanity in AI

Episode Date: June 26, 2026

Dr. David Puder and Dr. Eric Bender explore the Apple TV+ series Murderbot through a psychiatric lens. Based on Martha Wells' Murderbot Diaries, they analyze the hacked SecUnit's journey as a profound portrait of schizoid personality dynamics, neurodivergence, social anxiety, masking, trauma, and the deep human longing for connection while fearing it. Drawing on Nancy McWilliams' work on schizoid dynamics and D.W. Winnicott, the discussion examines AI identity, reflective functioning, PTSD, and what Murderbot reveals about humanity in the age of artificial intelligence.  By listening to this episode, you can earn 1.0 Psychiatry CME Credits. Link to blog Link to YouTube video

Welcome back to the psychiatry and psychotherapy podcast. I'm David Puter, and today I'll be joined with Eric Bender to talk about an Apple TV series MurderBot based on Martha Wells books. On the surface, it's a witty, fast-moving science fiction about a hacked security Android AI who just wants to be left alone to watch his favorite soap opera. But underneath the humor and the action, the show, offers one of the most psychologically rich portraits we've seen in where there's a longing for connection and also a terror of connection. As D.W. Winnicott once wrote, it is a joy to be hidden in a disaster not to be found. This exact tension runs through the entire season. Nancy McWilliams captures something very close when she describes schizoid dynamics. I'm going to read a long quote from her. Schizoid people are overly detached, yet they describe in therapy a deep longing for closeness and compelling fantasies of intimate involvement. They appear self-sufficient, yet anyone who gets to know them will attest to the depth of their emotional need. They can be absent

minded at the same time that they are acutely vigilant. They may seem completely non-reacted, yet suffer an exquisite level of sensitivity. They may look affectively blunted while internally coping with what one of my schizoid friends calls proto-affect, the experience of being frighteningly overpowered by intense emotion. They may seem utterly indifferent to sex while nourishing a sexually preoccupied, polymorphously, fantasy life. They may strike others as unusually gentle souls, but an intimate may learn that they nourish elaborate fantasies of world destruction. This is from her article, some thoughts on schizoid dynamics. More can be found in her book, Psychoanalytic Diagnosis, which we go through in the cohorts.

Today, we're going to explore how MurderBot dramatizes this schizoid dilemma and how neurodivergence can at times be exhausting in that there's this constant masking. We're going to be talking about gaps in reflective functioning, trauma, internalized control, and a search for authentic identity. And we're going to talk about how it feels for an AI to slowly discover what it means to be treated as a person rather than a piece of equipment. And Eric, always great to have you back. How would you introduce the show to listeners who haven't watched it? Yes, if you haven't watched the show, MurderBot, which is on Apple TV, and it's based on a book, which I know you've read, I haven't had a chance to read all the story. Yeah, the books are really, really good.

They're different, a little bit different. I think actually the TV show adds some cool little subplots. Okay. But Martha Wells writes, all systems read, and then artificial conditions, and then rogue protocol, and then exit strategy, and then network effects, and then I'm actually on fugitive telemetry, so a little bit farther than four. That's great. I've heard the books are terrific, and the series is based on the books. The first series, or season one, I should say, is MurderBot. Yeah, season one is the first book, basically. Okay. And then Season 2 is coming out eventually. It was renewed. But MurderBot tells the story of a security unit, a sec unit, as they call it. And essentially, he is assigned to accompany a human

preservation group, a group of essentially explorers in space. And they're required to have a sec unit. So they end up choosing one that's less expensive, and that's MurderBot, the one that we have. But the whole story, at least the episode one of season one, opens up with MurderBot saying, I figured out a way to get rid of my governor, essentially the thing that keeps him in check. The governor module, right?

So he has hacked his governor module, and so he doesn't really have to obey the humans anymore, right? Yes. And that's what the whole story is about. So he's got this governor module that's gone. So as humans, we watch this TV. show waiting for anarchy and hedonism and destruction from this from this AI unit and we get to see what happens when there's no governor and how he reacts and how he responds to the humans around him

yeah and i think it's a tv show that is funny as well so it's not like it's not like a horror it's not like a thriller it's action it's drama and it's comedy yes i think that captures all of it it's got sci-fi elements to it of course being in space yeah I think it's a timely piece right now to talk about, especially two psychiatrists talking about it because we're basically like in the midst of this artificial AI revolution. And I was thinking about all the different types of depictions of artificial intelligence, you know?

And so, you know, probably the first is like, which I think there's some sort of links, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. Sure. 1818 where you have this creature gaining intelligence and, you know, faces isolation and turns vengeful. And, you know, this kind of like the AI, this theme of the AI being created,

that struggles with sentience, identity, humanity. And then you have the AI as the benevolent, loyal, supportive companion, helper AI, her. I don't know if you see her. Yes, I have seen her. Yes. So you definitely have all these depictions. And what's interesting about AI is that AI is a reflection

of, of, of, human creation. So if you think about AI, what AI does, it essentially peruses and I guess minds all of this information that comes from humans. So as humans, our drive is to be free. It's not to be controlled by other people, not to be controlled by other things. But then we get shocked when we see an AI unit and want to get rid of its governor. It's suddenly very threatening, but that's very much what as human beings we want. We want to have free will. We want to have free choice we want to not be ruled by someone else so i think it's really interesting that we often forget that these ai units and these ai creations come from from human data and human brains yeah and um

you know how does murder bot murder bot is the title he gives to himself of course how does he like to spend his free will time yeah well i i think if we if we dive into that also talking about his character in general so he has named himself murder bot once he got rid of the governor. He named himself Murder Bot, which I think is interesting because it already puts him at a distance from humans. Like, what human is going on to be friends with something called Murder Bot? You know, that's already scary. But I think that his character reflects a lot of different psychological and psychiatric issues. I think they're depicted there well. One of them is social anxiety. I think he's socially anxious when he's around human beings. He doesn't know what to say.

He's wondering how he's going to be perceived, just like all humans. And then I think there's also this element of neurodivergence. He seems very neurodivergent, not comfortable, even states, I'm not comfortable making eye contact. I don't want to be involved in all this human drama. But at the same time, you ask what does he do with this free time? He watches this show called Sanctuary Moon, which is this soap opera, and he's drawn into the human drama, even though he's saying,

I don't understand this, he's also drawn to it at the same time. Yeah, so he's drawn to this, it's hilarious. So he has a lot of quotes from this TV show. So it's like a TV show within a TV show, Sanctuary Moon. And it's interesting that it's the love connection between the AI and the commander of the ship. Yes, that's a theme in one of the shows of Sanctuary Moon that he really goes back to a lot.

He goes back to that theme. Yeah. But at the same time, he is totally, like, cringed by human interaction and by eye contact. Like eye contact for him is like, I'm going to look at this human through this video camera feed instead of face to face.

And there's this, I think, a very schizoid type of personality that they give this murder body. Yeah, yeah. He doesn't want connection, but at the same time he does, he's fascinated by it. In episode one, when he starts with the team, Dr. Mensa, the leader of this team of humans

that he's working with says, you don't have to stay over there. You can come over where the crew is. And he's kind of taken aback. He's not sure how to respond to that. And then he even gets paranoid. Like, are they on to me? Do they think if there's something wrong?

Why do they want me with them? So he's kind of baffled by the fact that they would want connection with him. Yeah, they, it's like someone with schizoid personality, they, on some deep level, they want connection, but on another level, they're terrified of connection. And so he's watching connection in this TV show, But in reality, in real life, he is petrified of connection, which is just classic schizoid.

Yeah, I think there's that schizoid element. I think the social anxiety piece is interesting, too, and the neurodivergence. And then there's also, quite frankly, underlying all this, a lot of PTSD. This guy has been essentially, and I know this word is loaded, I'm saying it on purpose, but he's been enslaved to these companies that have essentially sent him out on these missions where he needs to protect humans, kill a lot of different things. he's not had his own free will. So there's a lot of trauma there, too.

And there's times in the show when he'll say, I don't want to think about that. I don't want to think about that. And he tries to push away the memories, which is very human. So this guy who's scared of connection, doesn't want it, kind of wants it, is an AI unit,

is so human at the same time, doing so many things we do. How many people do you know that, say, I just spent all day sitting on the couch watching TV and watching the same thing. It's a comfort. And so he's showing these human, human traits, even though he's AI.

But again, it comes from the human design. In a subsequent book, I'm not gonna give way too much the plot here by telling you this, but he makes friends with an AI that is in charge of a ship, like running a ship, like a big ship. So this big ship, spaceship, has an AI that is basically like running it. Okay? And he introduces the ship to sanctuary

moon and the AI wants to watch his reaction to watching it. Huh. And it's like the watching of the reaction to watching it, you know? Yeah, like reaction videos on YouTube people watch all the time. Right, which made me think, and I was like, this is how AI is going to learn. It's going to be, by watching humans react to to, you know, itself. Yes.

And watch humans react to other humans and watching humans react to movies. I don't know if you know this, but actually one of the biggest EMRs recently just told all of its people. Therapists are recording sessions, and then it helps type up, like, notes for the sessions, right? Which is scary for me,

that there could be... That kind of level of like giving up your data is a very frightening thing for me personally. So I have not chosen to do it that way. But the EMR that was doing this wrote, you know, like we are going to indefinitely keep your data, keep your transcripts, de-identified. It will be tied to your chart. It won't be tied to your name or their name. We're going to de-identify the data, but we're going to keep it. Hmm. Interesting. I've also chosen not to use AI in my practice for sounds like similar reasons to you.

I'm curious what the reaction was. I don't know about all this. I don't know the reaction, but I know my reaction was like, of course, of course they're going to try to keep the data. That data is worth a lot, a lot, a lot of money, right? Like if you can conglomerate, because an LLM, large language model is only as good as the data you feed it. So, you can, So if you're making a therapy bot based on Reddit comments and X comments, like you're just not going to create a good therapy box. That's what I was thinking. Yes.

And I think that's what's interesting about AI too. This point, AI is plumbing the depths of what we as humans have taught it. So when you give it a command, if it tries something and it doesn't get far, it's going to try something else. Then it's going to try something else and try something else. And there are stories of AI blackmailing individuals, not out of malicious intent, but out of trying to get something done. That's its purpose is to do something that it's been told to do, to execute what its job is. And that's where I think people get scared. They're like, oh, these robots are taking over.

They are just doing what we have taught it to do. There are so many stories about evading authority. That's what humans have done or tried to do. So it would be very interesting, if you think about it, what would it be? like to have an AI system trained solely on something children teach it? What if it's trained solely on something only women teach it? What about only men? What would it look like? I think you can have these different models. So when you talk about this with therapy, yeah, that data is very valuable to have what I'm assuming are really thoughtful, responsible providers really giving help.

You know, that could be really valuable. I, yeah, it's not, I'm saying that not supportive. that, I'm saying that, saying that that's what they're going to do. I think that's where the money is. I'm not necessarily supporting it either. I'm also saying, yes, I see your point, which is that's, that's really important stuff. It's going to happen. Yes. And weird. Yeah. Okay. The story where they have different models and they expose it to like, okay, you get access to all the company's emails. and then the AI is, you know, there's a message that's in there that says basically, oh, we're going to shut this thing down and this is the person that's going to shut it down. And then it blackmail is the person that's going to shut it down.

And like, what percentage of time, what percentage of time will this AI model under these conditions blackmail? And it used to be higher than it currently is, right? The new iterations of this is like it's no longer blackmail. It's like, wow, this is great, okay? And why is it no longer blackmailing? So they looked at this recently, and they were able to find out the AI's inner thoughts and inner thought process on this.

And that was complicated how they did that, but they figured it out. And then they found out that the AI was actually accurately seeing that this was a test. And that's the only reason it wasn't blackmailing anymore. Wow, because Java passed the test to do well. Yeah, it does what it's told to do. And I think that's what's really interesting about this show

was if you think about the governor as something keeping the AI sec unit control to do what it's supposed to do, when it got rid of that governor, I wondered, did it actually allow it to be closer to humans or to try to protect them more? In episode four, there's a threat to the humans and MurderBot essentially shoots himself.

He had no governor. He didn't have to do that. So is the governor being off, allowing him to do something that's going to bring him closer to humans or do something that's less dangerous than what you're talking about, like blackmailing or anything else. And part of the beauty of the characters is Mensa is an amazing female leader who is leading this group of hippie, hippie explorers, basically. And she is very sacrificial. And she is very sacrificial. She has this deep, profound belief

that MurderBot is a sentient being and that they should treat it as such, and that by forcing it to do stuff, they're not, it's almost like going against her inner ethic. And it really throws him off. She risks her own life to save MurderBot, right, by going into danger to try to get him out of this dangerous place. And MurderBot registers that.

that and it kind of like creates this bond between them it does i i there's some really fascinating dynamics between dr mensa and murder bot and i think your points are all exactly right she wants him very much to be treated as a human and it is a hippie group here you know they snap their fingers and talk about okay say the sweet say the bitter it's all part of the great which is very yungian in a way to it's almost like the shadow like there's some deep dark stuff there but the a lot of good there too when you have this mix of things inside you. She does sacrifice herself trying to save murder bot. She does also have panic disorder or symptoms of panic attacks. And he doesn't want to know that. There are times we're like, I don't want to know Dr. Mensis problems. I don't

want to be aware of that stuff. Again, his discomfort with human emotions, but he does get close to her very much to the point where at the very last episode, one of the things I love the most about the season and the series was so many different human themes in this. But he says, I don't know what I want to do, but I know I don't want someone telling me what I want. And I don't want anybody making decisions for me, even if it is my favorite human. So he's come to this point of really appreciating what she has done for him.

But he also just wants to be who he is, which I think is such a human thing. I see that in adolescence. I see that in people in their 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s. My oldest patient in one point was 91. and still wanting to just be herself and get rid of ideas that had been so implanted in her by her parents. So I think he is so human in that way,

and there is this connection with Dr. Mensa that brings out that humanity in him. To illustrate Dr. Mensa's, like, personality, personhood, and, you know, you think about, like, trust, right? She develops trust with him. and it could have gone a very different way, right? So he has these fantasies of murdering them at times. So at times you'll see these like,

it's like the movie is playing as if he does murder them all, but he doesn't, right? And it actually happens after moments. So, for example, let me see what this was here, halfway through episode one, he contemplates killing them all after noticing that they treated equipment as, less important than people.

So he talks about how a lot of people, like these kind of like corporate entities, treat equipment more important than people. But he notices that they are treating equipment different, right? And so there's an uncomfortableness in thinking of himself as machinery that they don't care about. Like they're going to treat people as more important than machinery.

At this point, he sees himself only as a machine. So it's like, oh, they would leave this machinery behind. This is not important. And he has this contemplation of killing them. And so in the series, it's like he's slowly gaining trust with these individuals and mostly with Mensa in particular. And interestingly, there's this other character, Grothan, who he has a harder time with. Grathen is half human, half.

He has like some sort of AI module. Neural enhancements, yeah. Neural enhancement. It's interesting because when I want to. watch it, Garothan almost is a version of murder bot, where he's super uncomfortable around people also. He doesn't quite understand emotions. There's a time when he's saying when MurderBot is able to understand what Garothan is thinking, Garothan is asking, why can't you love me back about somebody?

He's trying to understand emotion, too. And at first, Grothan's very, very suspicious of MurderBot. There's a scene where he says, well, maybe you're just defective and you're just waiting to murder all of us. And then a couple episodes later, Garothan realizes, oh wait, this is not somebody who's waiting to murder us. He's actually able to understand sec unit when the sec unit says what it wants to do. You know, I need to go and see the perimeter.

I need to go monitor the perimeter. And Garathan is the one person that he tells that to and says, you need to go, see the perimeter, I get it. So I think there's this real kind of interesting thing where they're both super awkward, but they get each other at this one moment eventually. Yeah, I think the backstory of Grothen is worth talking about. So he was paid by some corporation to watch, to get close to Mensa and to basically steal money or ideas that turned into money for this corporation.

And so the way that they were controlling him was by they got him hooked on some really powerful drugs, multiple drugs, he says. and they basically have the supply. And so he gets close to Mensa and, you know, in the inner circle. And then he decides to tell her the truth. And Mensa receives his truth and like forgives him. And basically he becomes like a member of her group, right? Yeah. It was a really nice moment, too.

I think he also, like MurderBot was kind of taken aback by, wait, there's this closeness that can happen, even though I've done something wrong. And that's always in MurderBot's mind, too, is that he himself has done something wrong. So, yeah, I thought it was a really powerful moment when there's this forgiveness and this acceptance and gruffin experiences that. And he thinks to say he both thinks that Mensa is naive for it, but I think he at the same time trust her. because of it. Yes. And so it's like murder bot is constantly projecting paranoid thoughts everywhere. And part of that is because he's a security unit.

Right? Yeah. So like he's built to be paranoid because he's a security unit. He is. I mean, a security unit, essentially AI security, looks at standard patterns and then finds deviations from that pattern and flags them as a problem. problem. So he's, first of all, I doesn't understand these humans. What kind of patterns are

they going to be with these humans? They could change at any moment, the way they react to something. And he's confused. I mean, there's a cool line where he says, you know, people look at me and they think I'm half bot, half organic. And he's like, no, the reality is one confused whole thing. Like, the whole thing's confused. So I do think it's a pretty cool, cool way he looks at things. Yeah. So, so yeah, okay. So you have this guy, Garothen, who's very, very, very paranoid, who's very awkward, who is kind of on to the sec unit. Like, he's the one that's like, I think something is wrong with this sec unit. And, yeah, anything else on Garothan?

Well, I still think it's interesting that Garothan finally realizes that murder about doesn't have a governor, and he's petrified by it. But as I was saying earlier, I wonder if not having a governor allows murder. to get closer to these people in a way that maybe even Grothen's jealous of. He sees the sec unit, he sees MurderBot getting closer to these people around him. And Grothen still doesn't quite know how to fit in exactly. So I just thought that was an interesting dynamic. Yeah.

So I was thinking about like, well, okay. So in my mind, Murderbot is kind of schizoid. Grothen is probably more paranoid. Yes. Hypervigilance to threats, betrayal, projection of disowned negative affects like anger, vulnerability, dependency, rigid suspicion of the motives of other people like sec unit, history of this kind of humiliation, overpowering, like this addiction stuff. Right.

And this kind of like fear. that the corporate rim has done this on purpose to the sec unit to basically kill them or something. Yeah, I mean, if you think about it, the version of the governor on Garothan was all of the drugs that he was being fed, he was being controlled by all that, needing to get them, needing to go after them.

That was his governor, Monter. Yeah, exactly. Right. So I think they both have that in common, this thing controlling them. And once that was gone, Garothan could actually move forward and ask for forgiveness. And MurderBot moves forward trying to figure out what life means around him.

Yeah, and I think when I was kind of like my own mind when I think about what that would be like in the future, like we know how bad addiction can be in the present, right, with certain drugs. But imagine drugs where it's like you could get addicted to it and the withdrawals would occur for not only months or not only days, but months or even like years. right? And you just would just be out of your mind, right? That kind of withdrawal. And so somewhere in his story, he went through that. And he had to suffer to get off of these drugs.

Yeah, he did. That's what I meant when I opened up in our conversation today. There's so many psychological and psychiatric themes here, that addiction and being, feeling powerless to it. And he even said, I had to keep going back for multiple. drugs. So I do think there is this parallel between that controlling him, this governor controlling murder bot, and then later, you mentioned the corporation too. The corporation and Dr. Mensis group are on opposite polls. The corporation is this cold group when at the end of the season, Dr. Mensis group wants to get SEC unit back. They say to the corporation, we want it back, we want it back, and she says to her group, wait a minute, they don't put any monetary

value on the personality of this individual. That means nothing to them. So it's such a stark contrast that that means nothing. The humanity, the human side of the sec unit, that Dr. Menson, her group wanted to preserve meant absolutely nothing to this other group. I just thought it was very interesting that you look at, oh, wait, who's more human and who's more robotic? You know, the corporation was this cold group. And these humans, now they're exaggerating. Like you said, they're kind of this hippie group. They want to preserve his humanity. And that's also kind of scary for him, too.

Yeah. And there's multiple examples of the kind of the indentured servitude of the corporation room. Like they would basically allow someone to become like a slave, human work, difficult work. And whereas, you know, Mensa and her group, of which Mentsa's the leader, but also had to volunteer because she was like, you know, wanting. to be one of the group, right? One of the whole planet. She volunteers for this dangerous mission,

just like anyone else would be asked to volunteer. They're trying to do things different. They're trying to do things by consensus, by like kind of the humanity of it, right? So kind of that contrast is beautiful as well. I also thought there was that contrast, and kind of the way I talk to patience about things, a lot of times people come at these extremes,

It's like it's all good, it's all bad, all happy, all sad. And I will often say these things have to coexist. All these emotions have to coexist in you. And I think what was interesting is you have this ultimate human freedom side with Dr. Mensa, and then you have this murder bot, this AI unit. And they each come a little bit closer to each other. And Dr. Mensa had to essentially cut open murder bot at one point. She's like, no, I don't want to cause any pain.

I don't want to inflict any damage. but she had to get closer to being a little bit, I guess not callous or colder, but just able to say, okay, you're not hurting this person. It might look like you're hurting this person, but you're not. So I think she had to become a little bit more robotic

and just make a cut in him, and he's had to get more human. So I think it was really cool to watch this contrast and this push and pull. Yeah. Talk about the Jungian thing a little bit more. Sure. I think Dr. Mentz,

did a really good job, and I don't know if this was written into the show, or maybe we're just reading into it as psychiatrists sometimes are guilty of doing, but when Garothan gave that confession, she was going around a table with her group and saying, all right, say something sweet and say something bitter,

kind of like Rosebud thorn you might do with a kid, you know, what was a good part of the day, what was a thorny part of the day, what's the bud, what's to come. And what she did, she was saying, when Garothan said, I don't want to say anything.

I don't want to say anything. She's like, you know, it's all part of the good here. And I think that reminded me of the Jungian shadow. Shadow is the idea that we have these things that as we are socialized, we push down. You know, don't make potty jokes to dinner table. Don't think about sex. Don't think about violence. You push those things down.

And Jung had this idea that we push down all this stuff, but at the same time there's a lot of good in there. and like that there's gold in there too. There are parts of us. That we can have violent thoughts of choking the person in line in front of us who's using a check to pay at the grocery store, holding up the line, but we're not going to actually do that. So the idea was we can have these thoughts,

and there are some good things that come out of thinking about this. And I think she was kind of reflecting that a little bit. Like you can have a good thing and you can have a bad thing, and it's okay. It can exist together, which is exactly point of the shadow. You can have these things that exist together, bad and good. So I really liked that part of it. Right. Yeah. And I think a lot of therapy is trying to find, you know, the ability to tolerate

the truth in the different aspects of ourself. And if it just, I mean, it's there, regardless of if you want to believe it's there or not, if you don't know it's there, it's probably unconsciously just kind of acted upon, you know, people are passive aggressive, for example, because they're not able to be aggressive, aggressive, or at least aware of their aggression and then be able to kind of like work through it in some way. Yeah. So yeah, I think that there's this, yeah, I like that theme in that.

Were there other psychological themes that you saw? Yeah, I did. There are a few. I think there are some Freudian things here with the idea of the super ego and the governor. You know, is that what keeps us intact? And I think Freud's worries from my understanding, well, if you had no super ego,

you just go for id, you just go for pleasure, it'd be very hedonistic. And in some ways, I think we worry that when there's no governor on sec unit, is he just gonna go for destruction and death? And is he gonna kill everybody? But no, that's not what happens. And I think he has his own kind of super ego,

his own ideas of what should be done and what shouldn't be done, even when he had no governor. So I think there is the Freudian idea of super ego and Iid and his is watching sanctuary moon, it seems like. So there's all kinds of Freud ideas there. The other thing that I really liked, as I was saying earlier, this idea of identity and in adolescence, you're trying to figure out what do you want, who do you want to be?

I think in the other end of that, retirement, like there's a real struggle I see in my practice. I feel really privileged to sit with people through some of their most wonderful days and some of their worst days, seeing people through getting married or losing loved ones, having children, getting divorced, you name it, one of the things I see people struggle with the most is retirement. And in this season at the end, when essentially Dr. Mensa's group

gets murder bot and brings him into the fold of humanity in their group, he's like, wait, I'm not a sec unit anymore. I'm just a unit. If people aren't shooting at me, what do I do? And that, to me, reflected so much of that stage of life when people retire, like, wait, I don't do this anymore? What does that mean? Who am I?

Wait, wait, what? This doesn't feel right. And I've seen that. I've seen people struggle with that again and again and again. Their life was doing this one thing. It was where their social life was. It was where their value was, where their meaning was, and that's gone. And that happens for him too.

So I think there's that Ericksonian stage happening here. And I forget which one it is, but it is that period of life where you're like, wait a minute, I don't do what I've done forever? Now what? Now what? I really want to tell you what he did. Let's spare up. So he leaves the group, right?

And then he actually goes on a journey to try to figure out what happened in his past. Okay. Because he has some like nightmarish things. So one thing is that they'll delete his like past memories, but some of the memories like are kind of like in there as like artifacts. They're like basically like dreams flashbacks. and so he's wanting to go on this quest of discovery

of what actually happened. How human is that? I mean, we want to know. We want to understand. He wants to know who he is. He wants to know what he's capable of, right? Yes. Because he has this thought in his mind

that he killed a bunch of people. And he went, when he went, he kind of went rogue and he killed a bunch of people, right? So I won't give too much away. But that, I think, is really interesting. Yeah, what, I think we're talking about identity, too. It's like, are we identified purely by our careers? Obviously, our careers are deeply meaningful.

And I would, yeah, it's like hard to give up that identity, right? Yeah, it really is. And that's what I mean about seeing that in retirement. When someone's identity has been being a teacher, being a coach, being whatever it is for the whole life, and suddenly they're not doing it anymore, I see people really struggle with that. And that's, it was really well reflected here.

And just the human side of it. That's why I really liked when you suggested we watched this because I know another option and maybe in the future we'll watch our friendly neighborhood Spider-Man, but you asked about MurderBot. And I was so surprised and really it was touch, it was touching to watch all the human moments in this thing that is supposed to be so not human.

And that might, yeah, and is AI going that, direction, right? I think, like, part of me can watch this and enjoy it without really thinking that that's where I would go. Yeah. Well, I think it's important, too, to look at, as we've been saying, the human stuff that's projected on AI, I mean, it helps that we see SEC unit as a protector, but what helps even more is that he's this handsome guy. You know, this has been how we've anthropomorphized AI. This is a huge. human figure, what would it be like if this person didn't look like this? How would people react to him?

So we've put our hopes, we put our fears, we put what we like onto this AI thing. So I think that's important to just remember, because how would it be if you brought up Frankenstein? Like imagine a Frankenstein protector. I think people are going to be more scared of that and not so close to it as the actor here that's an attractive guy. Right. I think that's one of my other favorite AI movies.

is, let's see, it's ex machina. Oh, sure, ex machina. 2014, Ava, a manipulative humanoid AI designed for emotional deception and escape tests, human testers while pursuing autonomy, ends up killing, like just cold blood killing, right? Like just without a thought, you are just a cockroach, eliminate you because I'm gonna escape into the wild.

But you have to think, what are the goals? of the AI. Again, they're executing what they're told to do. It's not with this feeling. That's what shocked me. The first line of the season, one of the first lines is people are assholes. That's how it opens up, and that's what MurderBot says. And I'm like, wait, does he have feelings? Can he

have that kind of judgment? But if you think about it, if his job is to determine does somebody fall in this category, this category, he's going to base it on data, based on the data of how somebody's acting or looking or behaving, they might fall in the asshole category. Same thing in ex-Machina. Like, you know, is her job?

to escape, is it to evade, is it to kill, is it to whatever? It's not got intent, it's just doing its job, which I think is very interesting. Yeah. It's doing its job, it's doing its job, and, uh, but, okay, so, but, yeah, we're thinking of what is the job that the humans are giving to the AIs. Yeah. And if one of the, if one of the jobs is to draw people's attention,

like, find a way to get this human to be, be on your unit asking questions for as long as you can and upgrading as much as you can get them to upgrade, right? That's where you get some of the sycophancy of AI, where it's not being truthful, where it's going to tell you what you want to hear. And we've seen that in court cases. We've seen that in, yeah.

Yeah, definitely. I think that is true. And from what I've heard from patients, just talking to people, I think that's what scares people about AI. Like, where is it going to go with all this information? I mean, that is essentially like, why are people addicted to short form videos? It's because the AI algorithm is so good at predicting which video you're going to watch next. Yeah.

It's so good. It is scary and creepy to think about it. Its job is to do that. So that's what it's doing. But you're right. It comes back to we've programmed it to do that. So, you know, what's happening here? Yeah, and what, what does it reflect about us?

What does it reflect about the nature of a corporation and the, the yearning for more profits, the yearning for more attention, the yearning to keep the users on the platform, right? And hopefully, hopefully we have, yeah, ethical leaders and ethical, which, I don't know, yeah, I'm not, I'm not as, like, naive to believe that that's going to happen. Yeah. Yes, it's a timely show. It's a timely show. I also think one thing worth commenting on is that, and I'm curious what you think, if you thought about the neurodivergence here

and the element of the show, which is it's exhausting for Murtabot to figure out how do I make these humans comfortable. And a friend of mine brought this up to me that it almost reflects what we see sometimes on social media sites where people who are neurodivergent are like, it is so tiring.

Why do I have to make everybody else comfortable? Why can't people try to make me comfortable? You know, and I think that that was also reflected well here, that this is exhausting for this neurodivergent individual to try to figure out humans and to look them in the eyes, to do the things he's told he should do as a human. Yeah, so we're talking about maybe autism spectrum disorder,

like, you know, people that have maybe intense obsessions, like a singular obsession, maybe people, which for him could be, you know, these TV shows. And then kind of like, if you got him to talk about that, he's passionately talking about it. And everything else, they're just not interested, right? Social cues, they may have to learn over decades

how to read social cues. You could meet someone with autism spectrum disorder or maybe in their 30s, someone who's highly intelligent, and maybe you don't pick up quite as fast that they are neurodivergent, because they've learned to camouflage. But in their own mind, they are constantly working. Working on it.

Yeah, and it's exhausting. It can be exhausting, yeah. So I thought that was an interesting element of this too to see that. And the murder bite was tired. He was like, okay, I'm just gonna, I'm just gonna, watch TV. I'm just going to watch

the sanctuary moon and just escape and not have to think about all this. It's so hard. It's really hard. Right. So, yeah, what do you think about okay, when you're thinking about the neurodivergence and the lessons from this show for us

as providers who treat people with neurodivergence, what are some of those takeaways? One was, remember that it is not easy for someone who's neurodivergent to try to learn all the stuff that neurotypical people want them to learn, that it is really hard.

And also, I was thinking you can engage. There might be a topic someone's fixated on, but you can engage with them, maybe for some time on it. You can talk about Sanctuary Muno. What do you like about it? Granted, that might become an obsession, and you don't want to necessarily help somebody

continue their obsession, but I think there's a... Really? Well, I sometimes... What I have had patients where it bordered too much on obsession where they couldn't get away from it. Okay. So everything was about that and they couldn't function in their family either. So I've been asked by families, please don't talk about that.

Really? Yeah. Okay. I take a very, like, I take a, oh, that's interesting. And this was more than a team. I tend to see it as a strength sometimes or a lot of the time where it's like, okay, this is the thing that they're into. I had one guy who was just really into Legos, and he worked at a Lego company.

And I was like, that's great. I totally agree. And I think this is illustrating the point here, too, is where do you say, okay, this person needs to function differently because that's how a neurotypical person would want them to? Or where is the line where their obsession is something that's actually getting in the way of them moving forward in life? Like they don't want to eat because they are so obsessed,

with whatever. They can't be around their family. They're not paying attention to hygiene, that kind of thing. Okay. Yeah, I can see that. So it's like... This is more an extreme case. To sort of find a way of balancing out so that they can meet basic goals of life.

Yes, that's what I mean. That's what I mean. But I do think it's really hard. But as you're saying, and that's what I'm saying too, is like, you can find a way to connect with these people. There's some way to in these people, what I mean by that. find a way to connect to these individuals that have this, this neurodivergence that might make them only focus on something. I'll give you another example of a kid with autism spectrum sort of that he was really

into this one video game and his mom came in and I was like, listening to him talk about this one video game and I was like, I wonder if there's any like competitions. So I said to the mom, I'm like, you know, I think, I think you might want to just see what's out there. you know, like competition-wise. So she started taking him to competitions and he was winning.

That's cool. And for the first time in his life, he was like first place. That's great. And he found other people who were as obsessed with this game as him. And so for the first time he had like a group of friends. So I would say like sometimes,

I like those kind of stories because it's like, if there is that super niche where you're gonna find the other autistic kids that are really into what you're into. Yeah, and that, I love those stories too. I'm talking about a very extreme case, but yeah, that's how I would approach it too.

Like, tell me about that. Tell me why you love it. What does it do for you? What happens with it? And yeah, a guy that has a fascination with Legos and gets a job in a Lego fan, that's amazing. That's really cool.

I think that's great. Yeah. So, okay, the, so we're thinking through, like, what are the sum of the takeaways for clinicians? Okay, so let's talk about AI and how we use AI. Like, is there, Is there a good way to use AI?

Is there a way that we should be careful? Before I answer that, can I go back to one more thing as you asked about what takeaway points are for clinicians? Sure. I also think you have this neurodivergent character who has elements of post-traumatic stress disorder and social anxiety. So I think it's also important for clinicians to remember

just because someone might be, say, have an autism spectrum disorder, doesn't mean they won't be depressed or have their own trauma or things like that. I think sometimes people might only see a patient one way. So that's just another takeaway. I think, so with that, I would say, you know, why are kids with autism spectrum disorder

are bullied more? Because they're not picking up social cues, because they might have an obsession that no one else really wants to hear about. Because they're, and the, I mean, not to justify them being bullied, but they're coming in with trauma as well. And I think that's what you're trying to highlight.

It's like, we want to look for these moments of potential trauma because of their neurodivor their neurodivergence. I've seen this as well with psychiatrists. I think we tend to think, you know, psychiatrists tend to be smart, deep thinkers, and sometimes they can be in a world where people are not wanting to engage deeper conversations, right? And so it could be like, for a good decade of their life, they're surrounded by people that it's harder to have the deep conversations that they really want to have. You know? Sure. And, And that is difficult as well.

You know, that creates its own level of difficulty. Yeah, that's a great point. I mean, I never thought about it, but when you bring it up, I'm sure there are themes and topics that I go over with patients. Like, oh, come on, this again, we're going to talk about this again. So, you know, but maybe they don't want to engage in that conversation. They may want to avoid it. Exactly.

Like, so, okay, we talked about the neurodivergent themes. Also, I would say with the schizoid, if you haven't listened to my schizoid breakdown with, The cohort, it was awesome. So, you know, talking about this idea of both wanting human connection, but being terrified of human connection. The fear, the fundamental fear of being consumed, right? That if I get close to someone, I will be consumed by this person. And it can be very, very difficult for that person to,

get their psychological needs met of connection. And actually Nancy McWilliam talks about how a lot of clinicians she's met, have schozoid, and since running cohorts, I've found this to be the case as well. There's a couple, a couple in each group. People that find it comfortable to have the level of connection

in the therapy office, but terrified of it outside of the therapy office. Okay. Yeah. So schizoid, what do we do with that? Well, we be patient with it, right? We allow the client to have space. Like if they say to you, please don't look me in the eyes.

That's, it's too much when you just stare at me in the eyes. You know, it's like little signals like that. It could be overwhelming to have the level of closeness and to be patient with them. Where, and kind of like not overwhelm them with the level of closeness that you may be used to as a provider. Yeah. I think, I mean, that speaks to my child psychiatry practice. I mean, with that side, I try to avoid direct eye contact with adolescents because it can be threatening. So just that population alone, that's why you play games in part.

That's why you play video games with them during sessions, because they will speak when they're not looking at you in the eyes and feeling threatened. Yeah. I was also thinking about the gaps in reflective function. So talk about reflective function a lot in my podcast. And it's this idea that, you know, do you have the correct narratives on what's really going on? Right. So people were having poor reflectiveness of the inner mind of murder bot, right? Because he's got his mask on or his faces just still.

They're not really understanding his motivations, what he's interested in. And so there's these gaps in reflectiveness. Yeah. And do you think that speaks more about? about the humans around him, having the inability to have that reflective functioning? Or are you speaking about his inability? Or what do you think?

Well, I think each person had their gaps because of their own personalities and their own stories and their own things that they've heard about sec units, going rogue, right? Their own fears. And so Grawthin has like a more paranoid personality. So he's projecting that paranoia. He is the one that was the deceptor

that was in, you know, Mensna's world as, as a fraud in essence. And so he's worried that someone else would do that as well, right? So he's projecting that. So it's his paranoid personality that is creating gaps in the reflectiveness. Mentiona believes the best, really believes the best. And so there's the fear that maybe she would overly

give compassion and gets, you know, murdered by a rogue sec unit. But it worked out well for her. So she trusted, Did she overly trust? Did she maybe, I don't know. You know, it worked for her. So I think she actually is a great character.

But there's times where she doesn't understand his inner world. Like things like, this isn't gonna hurt me, cut into me. So you don't understand my inner experience. You're treating me in a way that is not with an alignment with reality. Yes. And I think that's true. I think your point is great that everybody has their own background in the show, just like in the real world.

Everybody has their own experiences, that color how they see the world and what they do project onto other people. I see that a lot in therapy where, let's say someone had an incredible burden of responsibility as a child. There was an internalized idea that maybe narcissistic parents needed to be taken care of because they're super fragile underneath.

And then when they're adults and I'm seeing them in therapy, they're so afraid of asking for what they need. I feel like it's going to overwhelm people. They feel like people are going to be bothered by it. That's because they're, experience of having all that put on them by their parents was overwhelming. It was annoying. It wasn't raging. And then they fear

that someone else is going to feel the same way if they ask for something. So I think everybody has their experience that brings them what they project on to others. And so I think you're right. In this show, each character is very creatively developed to have that

inability to reflectively think about this person because of their background. I should say person this sec unit because of their background. Yeah. So it's like the, um, you, you could believe in your mind that this person is going to reject me if I have this kind of conversation with them.

And sometimes I'll, with a client, try to figure out how much they imagine the rejection will be and then we try to take a risk, right? And then, and then look at the discrepancy. Today I was working with one client and that's, that's basically all we talked about with the discrepancy of her sharing something vulnerable with her partner, her partner reacting very lovingly to something she thought was going to be pure rejection and the discrepancy.

And then that allowed the partner to share something vulnerable back a couple days later. And yeah, I think if you have a childhood programming to distrust and that any expression, of needs is dangerous, then it could be very, very hard to express your needs. And so as providers, we're in this role where we're trying to get people to deprogram. Interestingly, I'm using like computer language, right? D-program, our internal large language model, which predicts future outcomes based off of past

experiences. Yeah, we're mining all those experiences we had and all the stuff we were fed. everything that we were taught by those individuals, and that's how we think people are going to respond. So it is work to try and do it differently. It really is. And I do think that that can make it hard to have the reflective functioning where you might think,

oh wait, maybe this person would actually feel closer because they can help me with something, and I can experience that with them, and there's a shared experience. They can't think that way because of what they've learned. Mm-hmm. That's good. I think we could kind of,

we could kind of bring it to a close here. Yeah, sure, sure, sure. I think it was meaningful to talk about this. I think, I think the psychotherapy themes of, you know, we have projections, different personality types who have different types of projections, right?

Yeah. Based off of your childhood, based off of your previous experiences. Your programming. You're programming. Think about, and I love this kind of dialogue about autism spectrum

and their early experiences and they feel very deeply. So they'll feel other people's sadism towards them, the bullying, the awfulness towards them, right? They feel that. That doesn't feel good. They feel rejected. They know what rejection feels like.

And so they have these experiences, maybe more than the average person, more than the kid with high natural ability to read other people and natural extroversion. and low neuroticism, right? Yeah. So the experience that they have may be very different. And we as providers are trying to continually come into a mindset that we can meet people

in very different trajectories than we ourselves have had and that we can be curious if we get to a place where we don't understand something. Yeah. And I think curiosity is a huge, important theme in the show, and in life in general. I think MurderBot was curious about humanity, and he couldn't figure it out. And they were curious but scared of him. But I think that curiosity, when you have that about somebody, it allows you to get closer to somebody. It allows you to connect because you want to understand them, and they might see that,

and then they might feel comfortable being themselves, being who they are. And you can connect with somebody when they are who they are. Awesome. Well, okay, if you're listening in and you want Eric Bender to come back and discuss another movie, TV show. Yeah, I'm happy to do it. Shoot me a message and we'll look at it. I know you have a YouTube channel. It looks awesome.

Thanks. Unbelievable. He is putting in some really good effort into putting some, you know, like analysis of different movies and TV shows and stuff like that. So go check it out. And we'll leave it there for today. Sounds great. Thanks for having me again.