A Connected World: Playing With Identity Between the Virtual World and the Imagination
Wednesday, March, 6 2024
8:30 – 10:00 PM (EST)
Description: This presentation will examine the use of virtual spaces as potential space in identity formation, through the lens of the theories of D. W. Winnicott, focusing on the worlds of video games specifically. A video game is not just its gameplay mechanics or genre. It is a text that contains language, characters, mythologies and mysteries to be explored and dissected. It is an aesthetic art that, through visuals and music, evokes universal emotions and human experiences. It is a performance art, wherein the player can toy with perspective and interact beyond the role of observer, retaining agency through their avatar. It is a shared vocabulary that can be a foundation to build community with others. These elements, either during the video game or even after the video game is turned off, can invoke the imagination to access the most important component of Winnicott’s definition of play: that play is built on the manipulation of exterior phenomena in service of an inner dream reality.
To demonstrate this point, this presentation will comprise two complementary case studies: a 17-year-old trans patient in psychodynamic psychotherapy, and the presenter themselves, in interaction with this patient. For both the therapist and the patient, virtual spaces were integral to the safe expression of play, and in turn, an evolving relationship to trauma, the body, and gender identity.
Sien (pronounced, “Sheen”) Rivera, MD, is Assistant Program Director of the Prisma Health Midlands/University of South Carolina General Psychiatry residency program, and Assistant Professor at University of South Carolina School of Medicine in Columbia, SC. They received their medical degree from SUNY Stony Brook School of Medicine and completed their general psychiatry residency and child adolescent psychiatry fellowship at Prisma Health Midlands/University of South Carolina. They are co-chair of the American Psychoanalytic Association’s Committee on Gender and Sexuality and they present nationally and internationally on topics related to gender, sexuality, and new technologies.
| Please note:
– The registrants will receive the Zoom link to attend this meeting via email from
The William Alanson White Institute with subject line:
“LGBTQ Study Group 2023-2024”.
– LGBTQ Study Group events are not recorded.
– We are not able to provide CE credits at this time.
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For inquiries regarding The LGBTQ Study Group please contact co-chairs,
Esin Egit: e.egit@wawhite.org
Willa France: poetadmiral@earthlink.net