It is postulated that because video games have all the dynamics of Jungian dreams, they can simulate dreams. The DBG medium assumes the same dramatic-metaphorical structure as the cognitive unconscious (researched in neurolinguistic cognitive framing), the universe of correspondences (as studied in mythology), and the structure of dreams (as applied in Jungian dream analysis). Dramatic-metaphorical structure provides a point of reference for navigating unconscious psychic dimensions, tracking synchronicities and coherences among multi-level neurolinguistic structures, and accessing veridical data relative to subliminal states of individual and cultural psyche.
Published in Chapter:
Articulating the Paradigm Shift: Serious Games for Psychological Healing of the Collective Persona
Stephen Brock Schafer (Digipen Institute of Technology, USA)
Copyright: © 2012
|Pages: 26
DOI: 10.4018/978-1-4666-0149-9.ch019
Abstract
The author’s hypothesis covers the following: neural processes are correlated with archetypal states of the cognitive unconscious, archetypes form a magnetic field and energy center underlying the transformation of the psychic processes into images, as in Jungian dream analysis, images can be used to access dimensions of the cognitive unconscious, and drama-based video games (DBG) constitute a dream analog that can be employed as a cognitive research instrument. Therefore, using a dramatic-metaphorical point of reference, deep states of the psychic unconscious can be interrogated using Jungian principles of dream analysis, the most recent research in the cognitive sciences, and the mathematics of recursion in order to improve understanding of higher order cognitive functions, to apply compensational content patterns to the global media, and to foster sustainable, coherent human values and behaviors.