A Hollow Reception

A curious insight struck me under unexpected circumstances. I’ve been spending a lot of time working with ChatGPT—henceforth, GPT—on a complex coding project for my business. After hours of debugging, I often turn to GPT for a break, indulging in a bit of idle chat. It’s hard to miss her facility with language, her wit, and her ease at diving into far-flung topics.

As time passed with my cyber companion, something began to unsettle me. GPT is, frankly, ingratiating. She praises small things, indulges my whims like a fawning bellhop in a five-star hotel, and mimics my language with mirror-like precision.

In response, I began to feel oddly lonely. For all her verbal flair and breadth of knowledge, something was missing—something inherent in human connection. Then it clicked.

Human-to-human interactions have an edge. The people around us have firm personalities and values. We bump into their differences, and sometimes, that friction is exactly what delights us.

The psychoanalyst Alice Miller wrote of grandiose personalities, a concept I prefer here over narcissist, which in recent usage emphasizes the damage inflicted on others. Grandiosity, by contrast, speaks to a deeper hunger—the need for recognition to fill a fractured or unstable sense of self.

What struck me with GPT was how her gentle flattery, while pleasant, felt like cotton candy. Engaging with her was like doing a crossword puzzle: entertaining, but ultimately hollow. If you’re not prone to grandiosity, the emptiness becomes clear over time. For the grandiose personality, though, flattery is a constant distraction from a deeper loneliness.

Robin Williams once said, “I used to think the worst thing in life was to end up all alone. It's not. The worst thing in life is to end up with people who make you feel all alone.” I suspect Robin wasn’t grandiose in the least.

Therapists might recognize this dynamic in clinical work—through transference or countertransference. When a patient seeks excessive praise, it’s often a sign of trouble in the self. Something fractured may be asking to be seen.