# CSS Therapist

The control system environment can present unique stress factors to operators. At times it might be helpful to have a psychiatrist in the control room, but that is often impractical.

In the mid twentieth century, Dr. Joseph Weizenbaum created the well-known "ELIZA" program. It acts like a Rogerian therapist, returning statements based on the user's input. Due to the general naivete of some users, ELIZA actually fooled some of them into thinking she was a flesh and bone therapist. When Dr. Weizenbaum noticed how reality could be simulated by a computational device, he denounced his own project in fear of how advances in ELIZA-style code could negatively affect mankind.

So try it, but don't rely on it. It's a joke, get it?

References:

- Weizenbaum, Joseph. "ELIZA - A Computer Program for the Study of Natural Language Communication between Man and Machine," Communications of the Association for Computing Machinery 9 (1966): 36-45.
- Weizenbaum, Joseph. Computer power and human reason. San Francisco, CA: W.H. Freeman, 1976.