Postdoctoral Fellowship: Desensitizing Trauma Sufferers

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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.