Our Attuned Countertransference: can virtual reality experiences develop it

The Irish Forum for Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy

IFPP

Our Attuned Countertransference:

can virtual reality experiences develop it?

Teachers Club

There is a significant amount of work happening at the interface between research on mental health and Virtual Reality (VR), Augmented Reality (AR), and Mixed Reality (MR). For example, our speaker Noreen Giffney is part of the creative team behind ‘The World Comes Alive’ – a new VR experience and the first underpinned by psychoanalytic thinking, directed by Prof. Jill Bennett in the felt Experience &amp; Empathy Lab at the University of NSW in Sydney. Noreen will provide us with an overview of the development of ‘The World Comes Alive’, focusing on psychoanalytic theories that inform it, including writings by Melanie Klein, Wilfred Bion, Marion Milner, Donald Winnicott, Christopher Bollas, Betty Joseph and Thomas Ogden.She will then talk about how ‘The World Comes Alive’ might be useful in clinical training in psychoanalytic work and further professional training contexts, for the development and integration of theoretical knowledge with observation, analytical and interpretive skills, as well as increasing the capacity for self-awareness and self-reflectivity – all needed for our work in the consulting room.The development of a clinical skill incorporates reading, demonstration, practice and repetition; it involves activity, and it needs to be shown and perceived in the external environment. Important skills in a psychoanalytic context include being able to observe, analyse and interpret. Capacity is different: capacity needs to be developed from the inside. Psychoanalytic trainings facilitate the enlargement of capacity through lengthy, immersive experiences such as a personal analysis, an infant observation, and an experiential group.Theory is introduced and taught by means of reading, talking and writing, which can prompt a less emotional and more rational and intellectual way of engaging with it, with the result that theory can remain split off and unintegrated. Noreen will explain how and why she thinks ‘The World Comes Alive’ might be useful for bypassing the therapist’s / analyst’s defences of rationalisation and intellectualisation in presenting a ‘here and now’ experience informed by the theories required for the clinical practice of psychoanalysis. BioDr Noreen Giffney is a psychoanalytic psychotherapist and the joint Editor-in-Chief (with Emmanuelle Smith) of New Associations, a psychoanalytic magazine published three times per year by the British Psychoanalytic Council. She is the author of the book, The Culture-Breast in Psychoanalysis: Cultural Experiences and the Clinic (Routledge 2021), and is the author and/or editor of additional articles and books on psychoanalysis, psychosocial studies, and the arts, culture and mental health. She is a member of the creative team (directed by Jill Bennett) who developed ‘The World Comes Alive’ (fEEL Lab 2025), the first VR experience underpinned by psychoanalytic thinking. Noreen is currently collaborating with illustrator and animator, Allen Fatimaharan, on Cultural Encounters, a short animated film about the psychological nourishment provided by cultural objects. She is a full clinical member of the Irish Forum for Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy (IFPP) and a lecturer and researcher at Ulster University. Recommended preparatory readingNoreen Giffney (2024), ‘A New Case Study Pedagogy for Teaching Psychoanalytic Theory’ in Stephen Frosh, Marita Vyrgioti and Julie Walsh, eds. The Palgrave Handbook of Psychosocial Studies (pp 1-25) Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan Timetable:10.00 – 10.15 am Welcome and introductions10.15 – 11.15 am Talk by Noreen Giffney11.15 – 11.45 am Tea / coffee break11.45 – 1.00 pm Conversation facilitated by Noreen Giffney Note: You may like to arrange with other colleagues at the event to have lunch together (sharing costs) when the event has concluded, in order to meet and talk together in a more social setting.

Our Attuned Countertransference: can virtual reality experiences develop it

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Our Attuned Countertransference: can virtual reality experiences develop it

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