Nice - Journées Nationales 2009
Virtual
Why are we interested by virtual reality and how are we, psychiatrists, confronted with it in our practice?
Our nosography, our theoretical references regarding the clinic, lead us to constantly think and elaborate about the subject’s connection to reality, to that which is imaginary and symbolic. Psychic suffering is part of that plurality, so does our ordinary, daily functioning. The very first sign of it is the fundamental biological rhythm of « waking-sleeping «, which makes our temporality organized and where vigilance and dream alternate.
Virtual, a word so commonly used now that it is necessary to delimit its conceptual field before any approach regarding its impact, its effects on the person, which are too often demonized though not defined nor understood.
The field of the virtual is polymorphic. Everything there seems to be possible, in a world that is potential: « just a click and the world is yours! »
An illusion, for sure, but an illusion that has found its place so well in our space-time that one can but wonder about a « disturbing confusion ». Especially when this occurs in the context of a globalization that is considered as dehumanized by some, but what is man, if not in constant evolution?
Actually this evolution is what concerns us as clinicians:
What happens with the imaginary, with the psychic reality?
Are we observing a reversal of knowledge, likely to jeopardize the transmission from one generation to the other?
Should we take a closer look at the neuropsychic impact, especially on children?
Do we notice any development of the consequences of a constantly evolving clinic such as: addictions, borderline disorders, impulsive violence, derealization and confusion, perversion?
Is Virtual Reality underlined by an ideology?
We propose to tackle these issues at the National Convention with the contribution of actors from different worlds: sociologists, economists, neurologists, designers and of course psychiatrists and psychoanalysts, with a particular attention to child and adolescent psychiatry.