On Video Games, Culture, and Therapy

Abstract

The increasing presence of video games in modern culture requires psychoanalysts' attention not only to better understand the world their clients live in, but to also directly aid their patients in their difficulties. Many of the real world symptoms with which a person presents to the office may be reflected in the virtual worlds in which they play, grow, or take refuge. Understanding and inquiring into these worlds and their patients' experience of them allows analysts to help them recognize their potentials as transitional spaces. By viewing video games as virtual spaces and patients' own unique methods of using them, psychoanalysts see the game worlds as having a capacity for either harnessing or hindering various paths and aspects of development.