Even though there is controversy around his ideas, I have an armchair theory about why this study yielded plausibly successful results, and it's that Maslow's "peak experiences [0] provides a framework for it.
The armchair premise is that we naturally orient our identity and sense of self according to memorable experiences, and as a consequence, our most intense experiences (good or bad) tend to become a constant reference point for who are believe we are.
High and low watermarks in our life become defining to an identity, which our ego then adopts and does its job to defend it (the self) from all threats. You can "become," the trauma, and your sense of self, via the mechanism of ego, protects the integrity of that identity against all potential threats to it - even though the experience isn't you. Video games in this study enabled a kind of re-basing of identity from the experimental trauma by providing an equivalent or greater intense experience which memory and identity can rebind to. It's also possibly why psychedelics are thought to "cure" depression, because by using an intense experience to rebase your identity on memories other than the negative ones, you in-effect redirect your ego to protect the right thing about your true self instead of it reinforcing the negative experience that had substituted itself into your identity because it was so intense.
Utter armchair mind hacking, but it's testable. We can treat the ego as a kind of clutch mechanism where you can disengage it to switch gears, and re-engage it to apply the will of self. Intensity disengages it.
If you rethink depression as a kind of mental autoimmune disorder where the defense mechanism for your sense of self (ego) turns its aggression inward, a super intense experience can unbind the ego from that identity long enough for your true self to re-establish its primacy. Suicidal ideation in that framework is a craving for that level of replacement intensity, and not necessarily death itself, just something intense enough to release your ego long enough to switch gears.
Jumping out of a plane, graduating university, having a kid, winning an award, are all examples of positive peak experiences people remember as reference points to locate their sense of self.
What I'm suggesting is the implied underlying mechanism behind the study could be applied more generally to developing more controlled peak experiences that "blow your mind," in a way that dislodges the ego defence long enough that you can overpower a traumatic memory with a current more intense one, so when your ego re-establishes itself, it is protecting the integrity of the new experience as a rebased identity.
Crankery, probably, but if you do find a way to blow your mind and it improves your outlook, video games are fun, but I think we need to find more things that really blow minds.
The armchair premise is that we naturally orient our identity and sense of self according to memorable experiences, and as a consequence, our most intense experiences (good or bad) tend to become a constant reference point for who are believe we are.
High and low watermarks in our life become defining to an identity, which our ego then adopts and does its job to defend it (the self) from all threats. You can "become," the trauma, and your sense of self, via the mechanism of ego, protects the integrity of that identity against all potential threats to it - even though the experience isn't you. Video games in this study enabled a kind of re-basing of identity from the experimental trauma by providing an equivalent or greater intense experience which memory and identity can rebind to. It's also possibly why psychedelics are thought to "cure" depression, because by using an intense experience to rebase your identity on memories other than the negative ones, you in-effect redirect your ego to protect the right thing about your true self instead of it reinforcing the negative experience that had substituted itself into your identity because it was so intense.
Utter armchair mind hacking, but it's testable. We can treat the ego as a kind of clutch mechanism where you can disengage it to switch gears, and re-engage it to apply the will of self. Intensity disengages it.
If you rethink depression as a kind of mental autoimmune disorder where the defense mechanism for your sense of self (ego) turns its aggression inward, a super intense experience can unbind the ego from that identity long enough for your true self to re-establish its primacy. Suicidal ideation in that framework is a craving for that level of replacement intensity, and not necessarily death itself, just something intense enough to release your ego long enough to switch gears.
Jumping out of a plane, graduating university, having a kid, winning an award, are all examples of positive peak experiences people remember as reference points to locate their sense of self.
What I'm suggesting is the implied underlying mechanism behind the study could be applied more generally to developing more controlled peak experiences that "blow your mind," in a way that dislodges the ego defence long enough that you can overpower a traumatic memory with a current more intense one, so when your ego re-establishes itself, it is protecting the integrity of the new experience as a rebased identity.
Crankery, probably, but if you do find a way to blow your mind and it improves your outlook, video games are fun, but I think we need to find more things that really blow minds.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_experience