Virtual reality and screen relations in clinical practice – exploring co-creation, inclusivity and exclusivity

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

There has been a dramatic shift in the way that psychotherapy is delivered, supervised, and taught following the COVID-19 pandemic. With screens and sensory based technology seemingly everywhere and anywhere in our daily lives, many people in and out of the psychotherapy community were forced into an expanding virtual world that can sometimes be seen as foreign and alien, but can also afford new possibilities and experiences. In this article I will invite practitioners to reflect on their relationship with technology and consider interpersonal and political dynamics at play. I will offer some emerging thoughts and observations about the virtual space that is co-created when relating through screens and how might we begin to understand the shift in the way that we relate and identify online. I will invite readers to account for new emerging issues of inclusion, exclusion and power presented as a result of these changes, and explore what might be gained by paying attention to these dynamics.