In Treatment, in Second Life
March 18, 2008 — dusanwriterThe cross-pollination between RL and SL continues unabated including getting counseling in a virtual world for real world issue about, um, being in a virtual one.
A post on the SL newspaper People draws attention to the SL home of Jack Leisen, who works as a counsellor both in SL and in RL.
Leisen must be one of the first therapists in SL, and has had a home there for over a year. In RL, he works in Britain and is a member of the BACP.
Ermine Cortes gives a nice overview of some of the major issues facing people both in RL and SL as they relate to SL. They talk about motivations for going into SL, feelings of loss and confusion, and using SL as a way of masking RL problems. Cortes encapsulates the benefits of SL therapy in this way:
“We can log on to Second Life to escape from RL for a while or we can log on to help us face it. And possibly we log on to find ourselves.
Whatever the motivation for seeking counselling might be, it is comforting to know that problems here don’t have to be tackled alone.“
March 18, 2008 at 9:16 pm
Its funny I made a post in a similar vein last night. If psychology is about looking at yourself through your choices and decisions to figure out what your want to be; games can give you that disconnect to allow you to explore without some of the fears the usually hold you back.
http://www.questiocunctus.com
March 18, 2008 at 9:22 pm
Agreed, and this is a subject on which I seem to have endlessly pondered, coming to no easy conclusion and with no easy answers. I will continue to think of it as a strange loop because I think it defies easy categories.
Strange Loop
Strange Loop 2
Finally, the greatest mystery of all, and Death in Virtual Worlds.