Tuesday, February 14, 2012

Phobias and Jung's 2x2 rubix-sphere as science fiction virtual reality

I was reading this article about people with phobias about health. Phobias of health can manifest as both the physical realm and health of the subtler realm. Then I was reading this article about how virtual reality has been used as a cognitive behavioral tool of therapy. "They reported that this combination of tactile and visual experience was twice as effective as therapy with visual stimulation alone." The Virtual Reality Medical Center has been giving simulations as well as giving people physiological sensations. Their website is very impressive.

I can't help but imagine the possibility of Jung's 2x2 rubix-sphere as a science fiction virtual reality of the subtle realm in the same way the book: 'You the owner's manual' is a science fiction virtual reality of the physical realm.

Of the external world,  there are flight simulators that can help phobias about flight. There is SIM city that are phobias of the city.

Similarly, there are people like Howard Hughes who had phobias of the inner world. He was afraid of germs attacking his inner physical body.  Some other people, have a severe phobia towards clutter and disorder. These are the clean freaks gone to such an extreme that it manifests as a disorder.
There are other people who have a phobia to mental confusion in the same way that some people have a phobia of external clutter and disorder. They have an excessive fear of mental clutter or disorder. They feel claustrophobic and uncomfortable in a dirty mental space.
Hughes needed a super-sanitized (external) physical realm to keep himself 'safe' from germs. There are people who need a super-sanitized mental (inner) realm to keep themselves 'safe' from the dis-ease of mental confusion. Mental chaos can come from large degrees of mental confusion and disorientation in the same way that germs and the resulting disease from them can cause pain, disease and even death. But, as it turns out, excessive fears about being healthy can cause it's own form of neurosis. Excessive fears about losing-weight and being healthy can lead to it's own neurosis. That is why I really like Special K's 'What will you gain' campaign. It is a good way to look at health.

And then I was reading about the inter-disciplinary discipline of cybernetics. I couldn't help but think about how all those disciplines could be used for creating a virtual reality to cure different types of phobias that people have. Specifically, for the subtler realm considering that system theory, perceptual-control theory, psychology (especially neuropsychology, behavioral psychology, cognitive psychology)

"Cybernetics was defined by Norbert Wiener, in his book of the same title, as the study of control and communication in the animal and the machine. Stafford Beer called it the science of effective organization and Gordon Pask extended it to include information flows "in all media" from stars to brains. It includes the study of feedback, black boxes and derived concepts such as communication and control in living organisms, machines and organizations including self-organization. Its focus is how anything (digital, mechanical or biological) processes information, reacts to information, and changes or can be changed to better accomplish the first two tasks."
"Concepts studied by cyberneticists (or, as some prefer, cyberneticians) include, but are not limited to: learning, cognition, adaption, [social control], [emergence], communication, efficiency, efficacy and [inter-connectivity]. These concepts are studied by other subjects such as [engineering] and [biology], but in cybernetics these are removed from the context of the individual organism or device."
cybernetics article from Wikipedia










YOU: The Owner's Manual: An Insider's Guide to the Body that Will Make You Healthier and Younger
 
 You the Owner's Manual

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