Encefalus

I managed to write three articles with the word "suck" in the title. Since, I think that I threw enough rant, and after my bashing of clinical psychology (Clinical Psychology SUCKS or The Psychological Paradigm in the 21st century) I need to redeem myself. So, in this article I will discuss about something else, D&D and psychotherapy!

Jesus, help me redeem this blog

I found this article a few days ago Dungeons And Dragons - Or Mazes And Monsters? at PodBlack Cat. It discusses some common (and funny) misconceptions abour RPGs. What I found interesting in this post was the last paragraph

As a final point - I must make a strong emphasis that people check out the use of D&D in therapy settings - one such example is the experience of Derek Colanduno, the host of Skepticality, as documented by Mur Lafferty in The Escapist:

His therapist, Karen Patterson, asked him what he did for fun, since a lot of everyday activities count as therapy for stroke victims, and if they can have fun during therapy, all the better. When he mentioned his D&D playing, Karen asked for more information.

“Once she read more about D&D and other games of the type, she realized that it is a good use of my time at home to get myself back to talking normally and with friends and coworkers,” Derek said. “She also found out that in the early days of the creation of D&D, it was used at hospitals and schools for kids and others that had issues with talking and other problems with relating to others, or with the world in general. So, she became a big fan of me getting back to doing the gaming with friend on a normal schedule. Who was I to argue?

I have played RPGs myself. I haven’t played only D&D but I am also the biggest fan of Vampire: The Masquerade and of all White Wolf’s games in general.                      

One thing I had found very interesting in RPGs was how traits of one’s personality would enter into the game. The character we created were always reflections of some parts of ourselves. The same was true for the Dungeon Master. Since he prefered to create his own worlds (we didn’t like playing with ready worlds like Forgotten Realms) he created it pretty much to his liking, letting in his beliefs and opinions about the world.

That’s what made me think that RPGs can have implications in psychology

The new layman’s handbook

What if we could exploit the popularity that RPGs got today in order to create a new personality test? Psychoanalyst’s consider minor facts like the a slip of the tongue to be evidence of subconscious behavior. In an RPG setting we have more blatant facts. For example, the ability to play a paladin (a defender of the good), a magician or a thief. The alingment you choose, that reflects your views towards good, evil and the law.

For example, I remember that a Dungeon Master we had that was a fanatical atheist, and so he didn’t include any gods in his setting. Another one, that was very politically involved, and he inserted many political features into the story.

A new kind of psychologist emerges

Of course, maybe I am talking crap here, but I think that no-one will disagree that what I am saying is interesting.

And even if I’m wrong, the article I mentioned above, has another perspective. RPGs can be used in a therapeutic context. The article mentions that it helps people to socialize and talk to each other. Even more than that, role-playing could help them get in touch with parts of themselves. For example, someone impersonating a character with completely opposite beliefs could analyze his feelings and thoughts about his own view of the world.

After all roleplaying isn’t much different from theatre, which is an ancient form of art that encompasses the complete spectrum of human feelings. In ancient Greece, tragedy was thought to bring catharsis to the spectators.

Try role-playing this guy for example

Furthermore, role-playing games involve many times decision making. This could help patients to become more assertive, to exercise social skills, and to study their own inner selves. To go a little further, take a look at this research: Want to achieve something? Picture yourself doing it from a third-person perspective. It says that if we imagine doing something from the third perspective, it becomes much more likely that we will really do it. Our D&D characters can serve as this third perspective. We can even embede these characters with traits that we consider as targets of our therapy. So for example, a depressive patient could roleplay a cheerful bard.

Before closing this post, we must mention a research mentioned in the article in PodBlack Cat, since it’s of cognitive nature: Superstitions Among Roleplaying Gamers. It describes how roleplayers can create complex rituals of their own in a funny effort to influence the dice This, however, belongs to the domain of cognitive errors and will be covered in another article

Until next time, throw your opinions (and dice) and show this article to anyone who thinks that role playing games are just for fun!

 Further Reading:

Dungeons and Dragons: The Use of a Fantasy Game in the Psychotherapeutic Treatment of a Young Adult

Dungeons and Dragons: the use of a fantasy game in the psychotherapeutic treatment of a young adult.

D&D Therapy

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 7th, 2008 at 3:04 pm and is filed under Clinical. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.