How might facilitated Virtual Reality experiences develop our capacity?
There is a significant amount of work happening at the interface between research on mental health and Virtual Reality (VR), Augmented Reality (AR) and Mixed Reality (MR). This work brings together artists, curators, developers, clinical practitioners, patient advocates, academics and activists. VR, AR and MR make use of arts-based technologies to facilitate individuals having an immersive sensuous experience by means of wearing a headset. Some experiences require the individual to engage with the virtual environment – opening virtual doors or moving simulated objects, for example – while other experiences play out for the individual a bit like a cinematic encounter, by engaging the senses of sight and hearing. One important feature of VR, AR and MR is that each individual wears their own headset, which emphasises and accentuates the uniqueness of every experience. While the simulation might play out in the same way each time and for every individual, how it will be experienced will differ. Another aspect of these experiences is how absorbing they are, to the extent that one’s sense of space and time can temporarily be impacted. ‘Reality’ can sometimes feel ‘hyper-real’ in the moments immediately following the removal of a headset. VR, AR and MR offer highly stimulating environments and scenarios and, thus, evoke many associations, feelings and bodily sensations.
I will talk about my participation as a member of the creative team for the development of a new VR experience and the first underpinned by psychoanalytic thinking entitled The World Comes Alive , directed by Professor Jill Bennett in the felt Experience & Empathy Lab at the University of New South Wales in Sydney. The World Comes Alive offers individuals an immersive, 360-degree experience centred around a number of representational and abstract environments as well as the moments of transition between them. This is accomplished by means of the visuals but also the soundscape, comprising a musical score, human voices and sound effects. I will provide an overview of the development of The World Comes Alive , focusing on psychoanalytic theories that informed its development, including writings by Melanie Klein, Wilfred Bion, Marion Milner, Donald Winnicott, Christopher Bollas, Betty Joseph and Thomas Ogden. After which, I will talk about how The World Comes Alive might be useful in clinical training and further professional training contexts for the development and integration of theoretical knowledge with observation, analytical and interpretive skills, as well as the capacity for self-awareness and self-reflectivity – all needed for reflective practice in the consulting room.
A clinical skill incorporates reading, demonstration, practice, and repetition; it involves activity and needs to be shown and perceived in the external environment. Important skills in a psychoanalytic context include being able to observe, analyse and interpret. Capacity is different. It needs to be developed from the inside. Psychoanalytic trainings facilitate the enlargement of capacity through lengthy, immersive experiences, such as a personal analysis, an infant observation and an experiential group. The way theory is currently taught departs from the more experiential aspects of training in its being introduced by means of reading, talking and writing. This way of introducing theory can prompt a less emotional and more rational and intellectual way of engaging, with the result that theory can remain split off and unintegrated. I will explain how and why I think The World Comes Alive might be useful for bypassing the defences of rationalisation and intellectualisation in presenting a ‘here and now’ experience informed by the theories required for the clinical practise of psychoanalysis.
Bio
Dr Noreen Giffney is a psychoanalytic psychotherapist and the Joint Editor-in-Chief (with Emmanuelle Smith) of New Associations , a psychoanalytic magazine published three times per year by the British Psychoanalytic Council. She is the author of the book, The Culture-Breast in Psychoanalysis: Cultural Experiences and the Clinic (Routledge 2021), and the author and/or editor of additional articles and books on psychoanalysis, psychosocial studies, and the arts, culture and mental health. She is a member of the creative team (directed by Jill Bennett) who developed The World Comes Alive (fEEL Lab 2025), the first VR experience underpinned by psychoanalytic thinking. Noreen is currently collaborating with illustrator and animator, Allen Fatimaharan, on Cultural Encounters , a short animated film about the psychological nourishment provided by cultural objects. She is a full clinical member of the Irish Forum for Psychoanalytic Psychotherapist and a lecturer and a researcher at Ulster University, Belfast.
https://www.bpc.org.uk/about-us/new-associations/archive-of-new-associations/ Email:
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Timetable
10 am-10.15 am Welcome and Introductions
10.15-11.15 am Talk by Noreen Giffney
11.15 am-11.45 am Tea and Coffee Break
11.45 am-1.00 pm Conversation facilitated by Noreen Giffney
Recommended Preparatory Reading Noreen Giffney (2024) ' A New Case Study Pedagogy for Teaching Psychoanalytic Theory ' in Stephen Frosh, Marita Vyrgioti and Julie Walsh, eds. The Palgrave Handbook of Psychosocial Studies (pp. 1-25). Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
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