In VR, You Can Become Your Own Psychologist
We are not few who would save a coin or two by being able to be our own psychologist. In a very concrete sense, this is the topic of today’s piece — how Virtual Reality (VR) can allow us another perspective on ourselves, and how this may better our mental health. We have previously discussed how VR can benefit anxiety sufferers through virtual reality exposure therapy and Mindfulness meditation. In this piece, however, we will discuss a VR application that lets you have a conversation with Dr. Sigmund Freud.
Oh, but there’s a twist!
Be Your Own VR Psychologist
In 2015, Sofia Adelaide Osimo, Rodrigo Pizarro, Bernhard Spanlag and Mel Slater published a paper called “Conversations between self and self as Sigmund Freud — A virtual body ownership paradigm for self-counseling”. The paper discusses an application where you sit in a chair facing Dr. Sigmund Freud. Upon entering the virtual environment, you do not float in empty space as one often does in VR — rather, you notice you have a full virtual body that looks like you and respond to your movements. This may lead you to identify the virtual body as your own, an almost magical phenomenon referred to as Virtual Embodiment. We have written extensively on this subject in a previous piece — but put shortly, the effect, apart from being very interesting in…
