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.
My research focuses on the rise of military utopic visions of mind that involve the creation of virtual worlds and hyper-real simulations in military psychiatry. It examines how the American public is coming to understand rationality and mind in regards to war trauma and what is now being called psychological "resilience." Unlike the telephones, which also facilitate long distance telecommunication; creators of virtual worlds aim to create immersive environments – an environment that capitalizes on an ecology of senses – sight, smell, sound, touch, and spatial orientation. Today, video game platforms using virtual reality and "hyper-real" simulations have come to dominate military training, combat and post-war rehabilitation. Virtual warfare and virtual therapeutics are nothing short of revolutionary. I am an anthropologist and filmmaker committed to ethnography and cultural history. From 2010-2012, I conducted ethnographic research in New York City and Southern California with funding from the National Science Foundation. I began by exploring a new therapeutic called Virtual Reality Exposure (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 purported safety of virtual worlds. This exploration led me into several ethnographic encounters. I interviewed VRE therapists at several VA hospitals. I followed the life course of veterans who had undergone experimental treatments for PTSD after their tour at Abu-Ghraib. I interviewed staff and attended events at the Institute for Creative Technologies in Los Angeles where Virtual Iraq and Afghanistan were invented by a psychiatrist who collaborated with video gamers. I filmed the daily work life of venture capitalist in NYC and California and attended presentations at the National Science Academy in NYC and the Medicine Meets Virtual Reality conference in Los Angeles. I also acted as a role player in hyper-real simulation training to learn more about an experimental method of preventing PTSD before soldiers deploy to actual war theatre. I attended clinical training at Fort Lewis in Washington state alongside clinicians who were learning how to use VRE and implement clinical trial protocols. I tracked media that discussed VRE and PTSD and virtual warfare. Since the conclusion of my NSF grant, I have been conducting archival research on American behavioral psychology to track historical genealogies and change in the ways behaviorists have come to understand the rational mind and the ways behavioral psychology has influenced military medicine. What constitutes rationality has been a longstanding thread of inquiry within social theory. My research furthers this longstanding inquiry about rationality by exploring how the military has come to understand rationality in its development of virtual and simulation technologies to cultivate a fit mind. My intellectual contribution is to formulate a social theory of mind. The broader impact of my research is to communicate social science research to a wide public through my film, "Virtual War." "Virtual War" offers a multifaceted framing of what it means to be a human subject in military scientific research that involves virtual reality and simulation technologies. The film focuses on research that involves what one DOD funded university researcher candidly called, "the unholy alliance between universities, the military, and Hollywood."
