
Ask HN: Good command line psychotherapy programs? - willmhorne
I&#x27;m working on a story in which a computer programmer creates a therapeutic command-line-type program for people to use while on retreats. (I say command-line-type because it is largely textual and therefore cognitively aimed.)<p>Do you know of any command line programs that ask users questions towards a therapeutic end? (Something like, though hopefully better than, emacs&#x27; &quot;M-x doctor.&quot;) Do you have any ideas you would suggest were you asked to contribute to a project like that? (E.g., a particular coding language; a particular interface; etc.)<p>Thanks.
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jonjacky
A post on HN two years ago, "A therapy chatbot for depression" [0]

[0]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14504306](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14504306)

Kenneth Colby, a Stanford professor, had something like this in the 1970's and
80's. According to the Wikipedia article [1] it was sold as a product. I
remember reading a skeptical account of it in a popular book back then [2].

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenneth_Colby](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenneth_Colby)

[2] [http://rdrosen.com/psychobabble-fast-talk-and-quick-cure-
in-...](http://rdrosen.com/psychobabble-fast-talk-and-quick-cure-in-..). bah,
link now broken

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paulrpotts
In case you don't know, this all started with ELIZA, so:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ELIZA](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ELIZA)

You might follow that into background of other "chatterbots" \-
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outline_of_natural_language_pr...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outline_of_natural_language_processing#Chatterbots)

These would traditionally be in some variant of Lisp, for its metaprogramming
capabilities. But see also:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AIML](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AIML)

User interface? Well, see Alexa, Siri, etc.

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willmhorne
Ah, yes. Thank you. As for interface, I had the sense it would be non-verbal
(i.e., textual) so that the "patient" would have so subvocalize the responses.
But I will consider audio like Alexa et al.

