Virtual reality as clinical tool: immersion and three-dimensionality in the relationship between patient and...

VR represents the maximum level of evolution in interaction between man and computer systems. In Clinical Psychology, the virtual cyberspace offers a series of powerful and valid applications for diagnosis and therapy. The qualities that make VR software reliable and particularly useful in the practice of assessment and rehabilitation of certain psychopathological dysfunctions emerge with extreme clarity from the specialist literature. VR constitutes a three-dimensional interface that puts the interacting subject in a condition of active exchange with a world re-created via the computer. The possibility of not limiting the paradigm of interaction in a unidirectional sense represents the strong point of the new technology: man is not simply an external observer of pictures or one who passively experiences the reality created by the computer, but on the contrary may actively modify the three-dimensional world in which he is acting, in a condition of complete sensorial immersion. The nature of this exchange means that the subject feels actually present in this new context. The feeling of "actual presence" is perhaps the peculiar characteristic of this tool and is made possible both by the realistic reproduction of the cybernetic environments and by the involvement of all the sensorimotor channels during interaction. In this paper we focus on the characteristics of the new configuration in the relationship between patient and therapist.