Psychotherapy Volume 33/Fall 1996/Number 3 VIRTUAL REALITY (VR) FOR PSYCHOTHERAPY: FROM THE PHYSICAL TO THE SOCIAL ENVIRONMENT 1 KALMAN GLANTZ NATHANIEL I. DURLACH ROSALIND C. BARNETT WALTER A. AVILES Virtual Reality Therapies, Inc. MIT Virtual Environment and Teleoperator Research Consortium (VETREC) To date, all therapeutic applications of VR have involved the simulation of physical (as opposed to social) aspects of the environment. Researchers have produced simulations of heights, different kinds of spaces, and the experience of flying (airplanes, views from the plane, etc.), with the goal of improving the delivery of exposure and desensitization for the treatment of phobias. VR scientists are currently at work on the simulation of the social environment through the use of virtual people (VPs). We suggest that when VR gains the ability to simulate human social interaction, it can be used to assist in the treatment of a wider variety of conditions. In this article, we first review the existing applications of VR to therapy. We then discuss a variety of ways that VP's could be used in therapy. Introduction Although the technology of virtual reality (VR) is in its infancy, there is already reason to believe that it has the ability to improve and expand the therapeutic armamentarium. From the standpoint of psychotherapy, perhaps the key feature of VR An earlier version of some of the material in this article can be found in Glantz, Durlach, Barnett, and Aviles, 1996. Correspondenceregardingthis article should be addressed to Kalman Glantz, Ph.D., 12 Kinnaird Street, Cambridge, MA 02139. E-mail: kglantz@vetrec.mit.edu. is its ability to create environments that simulate real experiences so vividly as to evoke many of the same emotions that a comparable real-world experience would produce. This power—the power to "immerse" the user in a multi-modal simulated world—derives not so much from the realism of the displays, as from the fact that perception and action are inte- grated—just as they are in therealworld. In VR, auditory and visual inputs respond to the user's body movements; as the user's head moves, the source of a virtual sound seems to change and a different view of the virtual scene is displayed to the eyes. What the user does has an effect on what the user sees and hears. The user of VR learns by speaking, moving, responding, initiat- ing. Even though acts in the virtual world will not have the consequences of real acts, they will impact the virtual environment. Thus, the user of VR will be a doer, and, as is well known, doing has a more powerful effect than passive participa- tion, thus increasing the probability that learning will be transferred from the therapy setting to the real world. Several other characteristics of VR heighten its potential usefulness in therapy. We describe some of these in the following paragraphs. First, VR is highly flexible and programmable. It enables one to present a wide variety of con- trolled stimuli and to measure and monitor a wide variety of responses made by the user. Both the synthetic environment itself and the manner in which this environment is modified by the user's responses can be tailored to the needs of each client and/or therapeutic application. For exam- ple, a scene can be made more or less realistic (e.g., more or less frightening) depending on the effect that one wants to create. Second, the environment and the manner in which it is altered by the user'sresponsescan be 464 This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers. This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.