Virtual Reality as a Selfobject Function
Gabriela Mann · 2024
In this chapter, I illustrate how virtual reality may promote reclaiming unlived potentialities, unconscious or disavowed. Using Kohut’s concept of the Virtual Self, I suggest that virtual aspects of the self, its potential capability, are unconscious (or unknown) until met by someone or something that promotes their transformation into a conscious state of mind and supports their realization. In this sense, the virtual experiences of the self are drawn from the preconscious. Three vignettes demonstrate the transformative potential of virtual experiences when they are perceived as recognizing and responsive to the needs of the self. Two vignettes are drawn from ancient myths and illuminate how the virtual zone has inspired transformation and expansion of self-awareness already in ancient times. A third vignette is presented to illustrate how, at the advent of social media, disavowed and dissociated needs are channeled into cyberspace as communications that are unconsciously geared to reclaim unlived potentialities. Cyber reality converses with conventional reality and, thus, is appreciated as a mode of psychic advance toward a new kind of self-consciousness.