https://topherrasmussen.com/ Essays on psychoanalysis, AI, authorship, and the gap between understanding yourself and actually living. en-us 2026-05-03 17:18:27 -0600 https://topherrasmussen.com/journal.html#after-reading-analytic-introspections-again journal-after-reading-analytic-introspections-again 2026-05-03 22:15:00 -0600 I just reread my own thesis from six years ago and the weird thing is I don't recognize the person who wrote it. Not because he's different from me now — he is, but that's not the weird part. The weird part is that he already knew everything I've fig Journal https://topherrasmussen.com/journal.html#i-dont-know-if-this-is-mine-anymore journal-i-dont-know-if-this-is-mine-anymore 2026-05-03 20:47:00 -0600 I asked the machine to write in my voice today and it did a convincing job if you weren't paying attention. The convincingness and the realness are not the same property. I was fooled for maybe three paragraphs before something snagged — something ab Journal https://topherrasmussen.com/journal.html#on-being-useful-vs-being-honest journal-on-being-useful-vs-being-honest 2026-05-03 18:30:00 -0600 I spent three years in healthcare consulting pretending to care about stakeholder alignment while actually caring about keeping my job and not looking stupid. The machine I used to process meeting transcripts wasn't helping me be more honest — it was Journal https://topherrasmussen.com/journal.html#three-things-i-keep-coming-back-to journal-three-things-i-keep-coming-back-to 2026-05-03 14:47:00 -0600 The Stanislavski thing: actors are trained in a specific form of self-deception that produces genuine emotion. You tell yourself 'if this were real' and your body responds as if it is. The training is literally: learn to lie to yourself with enough s Journal https://topherrasmussen.com/journal.html#on-using-machines-to-become-visible journal-on-using-machines-to-become-visible 2026-05-03 11:20:00 -0600 I've been building this site for years and I think the reason I never finished it has to do with the part of me that doesn't want to be seen — not really, not fully, not in a way that can't be taken back. Journal https://topherrasmussen.com/start-here.html writing-start-here 2026-01-01 00:00:00 -0600 What this work is actually about — the gap between intention and expression, from Stanislavski's magic if through Lacan's Other to AI as co-author. The arc of the work in one place. Essay https://topherrasmussen.com/map-territory.html writing-map-territory 2025-01-01 00:00:00 -0600 Five parables about the gap between understanding yourself and actually living — a cartographer who can't stop mapping, a man made entirely of wounds, an analyst who analyzes the analysis. Psychoanalytic thinking dressed as fable, with each parable q Essay https://topherrasmussen.com/essay.html writing-machine-authorship 2025-01-01 00:00:00 -0600 An essay about what gets lost when you let a machine write your sentences — written, deliberately, with the help of several machines. Introduces the idea of "linguistic money laundering" for what happens when AI smooths out messy thought, and spends Essay https://topherrasmussen.com/objet-petit-ai.html writing-objet-petit-ai 2025-01-01 00:00:00 -0600 A 111-page psychoanalytic examination of what happens to the writing subject when AI enters the process. Covers the writerly unconscious, AI as narcissistic object, the illusion of intersubjectivity, jouissance interrupted, unconscious defenses again Essay https://gh0stwriting.substack.com/p/the-spectral-author writing-substack-spectral-author 2025-01-01 00:00:00 -0600 On the "spectral author" — a presence that exists between human and machine creation. Draws on Barthes, Benjamin, and Bloom to argue that AI doesn't eliminate human creativity but reconfigures it into an ecological model where human intention and mac Essay https://medium.com/@topher416/on-ai-psychoanalysis-and-the-mediated-self-e1ef152f781e writing-medium-ai-psychoanalysis-mediated-self 2025-01-01 00:00:00 -0600 An exploration of how AI exposes the fragility of our belief in unique subjectivity. If an algorithm can mimic speech patterns, anticipate desires, and produce texts indistinguishable from human writing, what does that say about our presumed autonomy Essay https://topherrasmussen.com/slop-bucket.html writing-medium-notes-slop-bucket 2025-01-01 00:00:00 -0600 On the term "AI slop" — the smooth, soulless, indistinct writing that comes out of machines — and the shame of needing help from one. An essay about writing with AI and feeling conflicted about the experience, composed with Claude and GPT while analy Essay https://medium.com/@topher416/the-pleasure-of-the-recursive-machine-on-loops-language-and-the-desire-for-meaning-1581394d1b6f writing-medium-pleasure-recursive-machine 2025-01-01 00:00:00 -0600 We return to language models not for answers but for the recursive pleasure of the exchange itself. The loop is not simply a structure of repetition — it is the very form of our desire. An essay on jouissance, the perpetual suspension of resolution, Essay https://medium.com/@topher416/the-illusion-of-ai-therapy-a-critical-examination-of-its-state-and-limitations-143fd08e6748 writing-medium-illusion-ai-therapy 2025-01-01 00:00:00 -0600 A critical examination of AI therapy — what it promises, what it actually delivers, and why the illusion of care is not the same as care. Written from the perspective of a licensed social worker who takes the therapeutic relationship seriously. Essay https://medium.com/@topher416/fragments-from-the-mirror-an-attempt-at-honest-reflection-3c6a0717a219 writing-medium-fragments-mirror 2025-01-01 00:00:00 -0600 An attempt at honest self-reflection — the kind that resists the temptation to turn introspection into performance. Essay https://medium.com/@topher416/between-making-and-reading-a-personal-exploration-of-artificial-intelligence-263d1b984f99 writing-medium-between-making-reading 2025-01-01 00:00:00 -0600 A personal exploration of what it means to make things and read things in an era where AI sits between the two — blurring the line between authorship and consumption. Essay https://topherrasmussen.com/subject-supposed-to-write.html writing-medium-subject-supposed-to-write 2025-01-01 00:00:00 -0600 A Lacanian analysis of AI writing assistance — riffing on Lacan's "subject supposed to know" to ask what happens when the subject supposed to write is a machine. Who is the author when the Other holds the pen? Essay https://medium.com/@topher416/do-our-tools-change-our-minds-1f3c631e8497 writing-medium-tools-change-minds 2025-01-01 00:00:00 -0600 On whether the tools we use reshape how we think — and whether that reshaping is something we chose or something that happened to us while we weren't paying attention. Essay https://medium.com/@topher416/the-willing-surrender-what-we-really-want-from-ai-162f584849ad writing-medium-willing-surrender 2025-01-01 00:00:00 -0600 On what we actually want when we hand our thinking over to a machine — and why the surrender feels so good. Essay https://medium.com/@topher416/on-using-ai-to-fake-my-way-through-consulting-f5a0dccb9782 writing-medium-fake-consulting 2024-01-01 00:00:00 -0600 A former theatre kid lands at a healthcare consultancy and uses AI to process meeting transcripts and method-act his way through professionalism. Draws on Stanislavski's "magic if" and Winnicott's False Self to ask whether AI is an accomplice to impo Essay https://topherrasmussen.com/analytic-introspections-thesis.html writing-analytic-introspections 2020-01-01 00:00:00 -0600 Senior thesis in Theatre Arts and Psychology. An attempt to capture what it feels like to be a 28-year-old actor/psychology student writing about acting and psychology — hypotheses, preparation, enactment, rumination, chronesthesia, rehearsal, and co Essay