Virtual Healing: Militarizing the Psyche in Virtual Reality Exposure Therapy

Abstract

This article analyzes the use of virtual reality exposure therapy (VRET) to treat combat-related posttraumatic stress disorder. In this therapeutic practice, patients wear a head-mounted virtual reality display and enter a simulation designed to incarnate their triggering memories. VRET visualizes the formerly invisible site of psychotherapy, achieving a medical aspiration that has been pursued since the turn of the twentieth century. This visualization subjects therapy to a mode of surveillance and mediates the conditions in which trauma is processed. In this article, I consider how VRET’s user interfaces produce feelings of agency that reconfigure how power is distributed at the scene of therapy. I situate this novel practice at the intersection of two technological histories: the industrial history of the military-entertainment complex that spawned VRET, and the theoretical history that unites psychoanalysis and computation in their mutual ambition to formalize thought. Contending that neither of these histories can be disarticulated from the violent projects they have sustained, I interrogate the politics of a practice that visualizes and virtualizes psychotherapy, arguing that VRET processes trauma according to a militarized worldview.