Virtual Reality, PSTD and Transformative Film

I just read an article from The New Yorker called “Virtual Iraq” about the use of virtual reality to treat soldiers of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. It is occuring to me that there is a connection between using virtual reality to treat PTSD and using film to transform audiences.

Essentially psychologists create a virutal reality experience of the event that caused the soldier to develop the stress disorder. The soldier re-experiecnces the event over and over again, riding the experience of its overwhelming power through a proccess called, “habituation”,: eventually gaining a sense of control over the previously out of control experience. The treatment returns the triggers, like loud noises, crowds, trash blowing across a road, to being neutral and not negative. There has been considerable success in removing the paralysis of PSTD.

What I found interesting was how the psychologists spent a lot of time finding out from the soldier what the details of the event were, the “hot spots”: the sights, sounds, feelings, people present, location, etc. When the patient was then in the virtual world the psychologists would gradually increase the presence of the “hot spots” further immersing the patient in the world of the original stressful event. It seems to me the “hot spots” are like perspectives of the event; the sound, the place, the smell, the people present, the culture; and their skillfull presence allows for a way to remove the unbearable disequilibrium of the event.

Could this method of using perspectives in virtual reality inform our using AQAL perspectives in creating real, affecting, transforming film experiences? Could there be something to be learned here about giving the viewer control over the stressful event of transformation or of moving the subject into object?

A hunch, to be thought about further…..