Replacing the psychologist with a computer, however strange it may be, can have a therapeutic effect because we invariably see in the psychologist a person who can judge us and experience disdainful feelings about our weaknesses. In many cases, the patient will not tell a real psychologist that which he reveals to a machine. Urges the patient feels are indecent and aggressive will be hidden from the psychologist until a trusting relationship is built. With a computer, the patient can feel more uninhibited, recognizing that the machine has no moral precepts and does not have the psychological constraints eventually observed in any human psychologist. 

The goal of the virtual interaction of the psychological program and the patient, as in a face-to-face consultation with an ordinary psychologist, is to help the person to improve the quality of his life. In principle, daily analysis of his psychological state and the motivation of his actions and review of the meaning of dreams and other subconscious signals can become a routine, a procedure as common for a person of the future as the practice of personal hygiene. 

Programs capable of maintaining the psychological health of a person could become an unavoidable fixture of the virtual age, into which mankind is only beginning to step.