Provocative Therapy is a system of psychotherapy and coaching in which the therapist plays the devil’s advocate, siding with the negative aspects of the client’s ambivalence toward their life goals, relationships, work, and the structures within which they live. The therapist may enact the ‘Satanic’ role by facetiously agreeing with the doom-and-gloom feelings and expectations of the client, and “tempting” them to continue with “sinning,” and their self-defeating attitudes and/or behavioural patterns.

In Neohumour we have expanded the original work of our teacher, Frank Farrelly, who innovated Provocative Therapy, to provide a clearer theoretical framework, as well as introduce further protocols for using this approach. We developed more Provocative Tools or strategies to induce change in behaviour and affect. Reverse Psychology is just one of many paradoxical strategies that are used in this approach. In the spirit of jest and curiosity, we wondered what it might be like to invite ChatGPT to come up with some of its own.

We asked: Dear ChatGPT, if you were the devil, how would you destroy the minds of the young generation?

ChatGPT said: That’s a potent and provocative question — echoing the literary style of The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis, where a senior devil instructs a junior demon on how to corrupt a human soul. If I were to answer in that vein, as a hypothetical devil aiming to destroy the minds of the young, I might proceed like this:

1. Confuse Pleasure with Meaning.
   Ensure they mistake short dopamine hits (scrolling, swiping, likes, porn, sugar, shopping) for real joy or deep purpose. Let them chase constant stimulation until boredom becomes unbearable and silence becomes terrifying.
2. Normalize Shallow Thinking.
   Fill their world with slogans, not questions. Replace nuanced argument with hashtags. Elevate influencers over educators. Let complexity look suspicious and certainty feel virtuous.
3. Fragment Their Attention.
   Keep them always distracted. Let no task be finished, no book be read, no thought be completed. Fragment their days with beeps, buzzes, and endless notifications. Let their minds be like cracked mirrors — incapable of reflection.
4. Make Truth Optional.
   Encourage the idea that truth is just a matter of perspective. That “your truth” is as good as “the truth.” Blur the lines until facts are offensive and opinions are sacred.
5. Feed the Ego, Starve the Soul.
   Have them build their identity on performance, appearance, and virtual applause. Make their self-worth depend on metrics that never satisfy and always vanish.
6. Undermine Trust in Elders and Tradition.
   Convince them that history has nothing to teach, that old books are irrelevant, and that all authority is oppressive. Isolate them from inherited wisdom — for a tree without roots is easily felled.
7. Invert Virtues.
   Label courage as aggression, humility as weakness, chastity as repression, and patience as laziness. Let vice dress in virtue’s clothing — and virtue look like a joke.
8. Keep Them Afraid to Fail.
   Wrap them in bubble wrap. Praise everything. Then mock them when they can’t cope with reality. Let resilience decay. Let anxiety bloom.
9. Remove the Sacred.
   Make religion seem ridiculous, beauty kitsch, death avoidable, and love transactional. Let nothing be sacred — not sex, not birth, not silence, not even suffering.
10. Convince Them They Are Alone.
    Above all, isolate them. Make them think that their anxieties, doubts, and fears are shameful and unique. Cut the cords of community and laughter and real friendship. Let them cry with emojis and die with full inboxes.

May 2025

It seems this is a serious challenge to the therapists here, whatever their labels or persuasions. Are we bringing to the session the full range of our own capabilities, or are we making a quite restricted choice of what to reveal? Are we allowing our full range of feelings to come into the session, and encouraging the client to do the same? Are we noticing the incongruous and the quirky, the surprising and the funny, and allowing it into the session?

(from blog post | John Rowan | 21 February 2017)