World Comes Alive: Psychoanalysis and Virtual Reality

World Comes Alive is a new immersive Virtual Reality experience made by the award-winning felt Experience & Empathy Lab (fEEL) / Big Anxiety Research Centre in Sydney. This VR experience is underpinned and framed by psychoanalytic thinking.

A screening and discussion will take place at the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust in London on 19 June.

What to expect
The event will include a 16-minute individual experience with World Comes Alive (2025), which will be facilitated by means of a VR headset. This will be followed by an invitation to write a detailed observation of the experience, after which there will be four brief talks by the creative team and small- and large-group conversations. The emphasis will be on experience, reflection and conversation.

Discussion may encompass:

• What kinds of associations, feelings and bodily sensations might be evoked while engaging in the World Comes Alive VR experience?
• Can reflective psychoanalytically informed thinking help us to make sense of our individual encounters with the World Comes Alive?
• How might the World Comes Alive help to develop and refine the skills and capacities needed for reflective practice?
• Might its integration into treatment programmes help clients/ patients/ service users to engage their imagination, develop sensory self-awareness and, in the process, promote psychological insight and lessen distress?

Conveners

• Dr Noreen Giffney, psychoanalytic psychotherapist, member of the World Comes Alive development team, and Ulster University, Belfast
• Professor Jill Bennett, art theorist, Director and Producer of World Comes Alive, and Director of the Felt Experience & Empathy Lab at the University of New South Wales, Sydney
• Professor Emeritus Lynn Froggett, Chair of the Association for Psychosocial Studies, member of the World Comes Alive development team, and University of Central Lancashire, Preston
• Dr Gail Kenning, artist, member of the World Comes Alive development team, and University of New South Wales, Sydney
• Dr Anna Harvey, social worker, Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust, London.

Booking link
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/world-comes-alive-vr-and-psychoanalysis-experience-and-discussion-tickets-1320901484899