Postdoctoral Fellowship: Desensitizing Trauma Sufferers

美国有关受创伤士兵治疗的丑闻提醒了美国公众战争苦难的普遍性。对此，一些在美国自称“虚拟治疗师”的医生开创了“虚拟现实暴露”疗法(VRE)。在VRE中，人们戴着耳机，在声音周围投射高清视觉效果，闻起来像是困扰着他或她日常生活的特定战争事件。使用VR，临床医生正在试验触觉，让创伤患者虚拟地暴露在虚拟世界表面安全的痛苦场景中，并使其脱敏。如果说弗洛伊德的精神分析提供了一种将自我视为个体和内部的方法，那么VR暴露疗法则是一种假肢，它将自我重新配置为一种身体外的体验，是一个虚拟暴露的场所。博士后艾米丽·科恩将会问：虚拟现实是如何引入新的自我形态的？这个新自我的社会影响是什么？科恩将在加利福尼亚州圣地亚哥的虚拟现实医学中心进行人种学研究和触觉训练。她的研究方法包括跟踪设计师和临床医生，拍摄日常活动，进行深入采访，以及志愿参加临床试验。科恩将开发一种新的研究方法，她称之为“原型法”，这是VR设计师使用的一个术语。原型结合了类别或事物的最具代表性的属性。利用格式塔心理学中发展的理论，科恩将绘制代表她所学到的VRE原型模型的图纸，然后要求设计师对其进行更正。通过要求虚拟现实设计师修改和完成她的图纸，科恩将学习设计师如何构建虚拟现实。科恩的研究有助于建立人/技术界面的社会理论，并向公共政策提供关于虚拟现实在美国战时医学中的社会影响的信息。她的工作对医学人类学和科学技术研究做出了贡献。这项研究将通过装置/纪录片展览广泛传播。

Scandals in the U.S. about the treatment of traumatized soldiers have alerted the American public to the pervasiveness of war suffering. In response, some medical practitioners, who refer to themselves as "virtual healers" in the U.S.; have pioneered "Virtual Reality Exposure" therapy (VRE). In VRE, a person wears a headset that projects hi-definition visuals surround sound, and smells that approximate the particular war event that haunts his or her daily life. Using VR, clinicians are experimenting with haptics, to virtually expose and desensitize trauma sufferers to distressing scenarios within the apparent safety of virtual worlds. If Freudian psychoanalysis provided a way to see the self as individual and interior, VR exposure therapies are a kind of prosthetic that reconfigures the self as an out of body experience and a site for virtual exposure. Postdoctoral fellow Emily Cohen will ask: In what ways does VR exposure introduce new configurations of the self and what are the social implications of this new self?Cohen will conduct ethnographic research and train in haptics at the VR Medical Center in San Diego, California. Her research methods include shadowing designers and clinicians, videotaping daily activities, conducting in-depth interviews, and volunteering for clinical trials. Cohen will develop a new research method she calls "prototyping," a term used among VR designers. A prototype combines the most representative attributes of a category or thing. Using theories developed in Gestalt psychology, Cohen will sketch drawings representing a prototypic model of what she has learned about VRE and then ask designers to correct it. By asking VR designers to correct and complete her drawings, Cohen will learn how designers construct virtual realities.Cohen's research contributes to a social theory of human/technology interfaces and informs public policy on the social implications of VRE in U.S. wartime medicine. Her work contributes to medical anthropology and science and technology studies. This research will have wide dissemination through an installation/documentary film exhibit.