Research suggests that using avatars in therapy, business
consulting and training may be as effective as their real-life
counterparts, and may have other benefits as well.
BY TORI DEANGELIS
For 30 years, New York psychologist Richard H. Wexler, PhD, has helped companies develop effective leaders and productive teams. But in the last three years, much of his
work has taken place not in Manhattan office buildings, but in
virtual meeting rooms. There, digital versions of employers and
employees, or avatars, come together to work on projects, get
training and receive help with professional or personal problems.
“Until recently, the technology just wasn’t available for the
average practitioner to be able to do this sort of thing,” says
Wexler. “But it’s moving so rapidly that [now] you’re limited
only by your imagination.”
Wexler and his wife, psychologist and executive coach
Suzanne Roff-Wexler, PhD, are part of an emerging cadre of
psychological practitioners, researchers, trainers and product
developers who are bringing avatars and other forms of virtual
technology into the practice realm.
“I wouldn’t want to make the case that these technologies
are the be-all and end-all, or that they’re going to replace face-
to-face psychotherapy,” says clinical researcher James Herbert,
PhD, a Drexel University psychology professor, who has studied
avatar therapy. “But they are tools that really do have some
advantages.”
These virtual environments are computer-simulated
interactive spaces that appear and feel to users like they’re
inhabiting a relatively real setting. They are often populated
by avatars that interact, talk, gesture, walk and “teleport” —
travel to any location they choose. Virtual environments create
a feeling of person-to-person presence and immersion — the
sense of actually sharing a space with others, Wexler says.
Psychologists are using two types of virtual technology in
therapy, teaching and training, and organizational consulting.
One technology is immersive virtual reality, sometimes called
“classic” immersive virtual reality. In classic immersive settings,
people don goggles and headphones and are transported into a
three-dimensional world that can include highly realistic sights
and sounds, as well as smells generated by computer-controlled
scent machines. The second is flat-screen technology, through
which you can access computer-generated three-dimensional
environments on your computer or television screen. A well-known example is Linden Labs’s Second Life, a “metaverse”
that allows anyone to log in for free, adopt an avatar and roam
unencumbered through a cyberspace filled with restaurants,
college campuses, business settings and a variety of fantasylands.
Practitioners use these technologies in different ways and
with greater or lesser ease, says neuroscientist Walter Greenleaf,
PhD, chief strategy officer at Thrive Research, a research and
development company that licenses a behavioral wellness
platform. Immersive virtual reality is generally done in the
same room as clients, and tends to be easier for both clients
and clinicians than Second Life-type settings because it’s more
controlled and has a smaller learning curve. (In Second Life,
for example, you have to learn to dress yourself, navigate and
communicate in new ways.)
That said, the two technologies are useful for different
purposes and conditions, he says. “In general, if a treatment
involves social skills and other aspects of interpersonal
interaction — how to deal with a mean boss, for example —
clinicians feel comfortable conducting therapy over the Internet
using avatars,” he says.
That’s also the case with student training or business
applications. But if it involves post-traumatic stress disorder,
anxiety disorders or other stressful situations, clinicians like
to use classic immersive virtual reality tools and to stay in
the room with the patient so they can help manage difficult
symptoms as they arise, Greenleaf adds.
Virtual reality therapy
Key features of classic immersive virtual reality are its ability to
augment people’s senses and imaginations, says Ivana Steigman,
MD, PhD, also of Thrive Research. In the area of substance
abuse treatment and recovery, for instance, Steigman is working
on an application that brings patients into scenes resembling
those that fuel their addiction — bar settings, for example — or
of emotional triggers, such as family conflicts. By bringing these
scenes directly to the client and therapist, clients can bypass
a big problem in traditional therapy: having to visualize and
recall scenes accurately, Steigman says.
In turn, this versimilitude provokes the same emotions that
would be stirred up in real life. “After a while, when you put a
[virtual] beer or line of cocaine in front of someone, the person
is sweating,” she says. “So you can really mimic their emotional
turmoil.”
