Psychedelic Virtual Reality: A Mixed Methods Study of Psychological Transformation

Abstract

Psychological research on virtual reality (VR) has shown its efficacy in treating a variety of mental health disorders. The rapid advancement of VR technology and innovative psychological applications of human-computer interaction during the past 20 years has resulted in renewed interest in transformative applications of VR. This dissertation explores the transformative process facilitated by experiences of a VR application, SoundSelf, that simulates psychedelic states using an immersive audio-visual feedback system. After presenting the background context, the literature review introduces psychological research on VR, transpersonal approaches to non-ordinary states of consciousness, and a framework of participatory empiricism to study transformative VR. The methodology section explains the cooperative inquiry protocol and quantitative metrics. The results and discussion sections advance an understanding of (a) the relationship between SoundSelf and psychological well-being, as indicated by quantitative and qualitative results; (b) the core themes of transformative process ensuing from long-term SoundSelf use; (c) the phenomenology of transpersonal events experienced via the user-computer relation within SoundSelf; and (d) the value of epistemic diversity in researching transformative VR applications, particularly when they evoke non-ordinary states of consciousness.