"All Power to the Imagination!" Virtual Reality Therapy in France: A Therapeutic Innovation between Technology and Care (2012–2017)

• In Event: Speculation and Innovation in Digital Health - I

Abstract

Over the past few years, virtual reality therapy (VRT) has increasingly developed in psychiatric hospital units in France, as the market price of VR headsets significantly dropped. Latter-born used with traditional cognitive and behavioral therapy (CBT) approach, Virtual Reality Therapy relies on the same epistemic basis, except from involving virtual reality headset to induce the patient into an immersive experience and help him confront mental disorders such as phobias or anxiety in a virtual environment.

Using ethnographic method, my inquiry focused on a top-range university French hospital, well-known for its CBT practice and more specifically its VRT medical consultation where one of the first innovator in France has been setting up a medical consultation since 2012, adapting tools and knowledge to adapt and ‘create’ French VRT, working at the same time to get institutions, medias and patients interested and involved in this new therapy.

How does the headset is enacted by both patient and psychiatrist ? How does the ‘machine’ interfere with the healthcare relationship ? According to both patients and therapist expectations, how does VRT work successfully to improve patient’s life? How do patients analyze their experience? Analyzing interviews and observations made from 2012 to 2017 in the VRT consult, this paper aims to contribute to STS analyzing how VRT emerged in France and how such a technical object materialize and transforms the way things are done in a therapeutic relationship.

Author

• Elsa Forner, EHESS (Paris, France)