What if healing didn’t require a couch or a softly lit room—but instead unfolded in a meadow full of poppies and shasta daisies, where a girl named Wendy turned twelve in a world crafted entirely by imagination? When an inner child shows up inworld, the potential for virtual alchemy exists.
Listen to a case study discussion about Alice, Wendy and therapist, Lucy HERE.
Avatars as Living Symbols of Self
In the therapeutic use of avatars, we witness a union of inner and outer technology: a meeting between psyche and screen. Here, healing doesn’t occur despite the digital—it emerges through it. The avatar becomes more than a digital stand-in. It is symbol, shadow, and self.
Take Wendy. She is eleven years old. Freckled, dimpled, and alive with the vibrancy of innocence. She exists within a virtual world, created by Alice, her adult counterpart. But Wendy isn’t just a character in a game. She is Alice’s inner child, unburdened. A living representation of soul—not just remembered, but animated.
The Soul Knows: Intuitive Acts of Healing
What’s remarkable is that Alice, without fully realizing it, chose to create an avatar of her eleven-year-old self—the very age at which a trauma occurred. This wasn’t a conscious therapeutic strategy. It was an intuitive act of soul retrieval. Jung might say the Self knew, even when the ego did not. In creating Wendy, Alice instinctively constructed a bridge to a part of herself frozen in time, awaiting re-integration.
The Symbolic Landscape of Virtual Worlds
When therapists dismiss avatars as escapism or fantasy, we miss the depth psychology unfolding before our eyes. Jung spoke of the active imagination as a portal into unconscious material. What we now call a virtual world, he might have called a symbolic landscape. In either case, the terrain is archetypal. And it matters.
Clients don’t just play in these spaces—they heal. When we meet the child-avatar, the warrior, the fox, the goddess—all common avatars in virtual spaces—we meet aspects of the self seeking expression, integration, and sometimes, rescue. These are dream figures with agency. They speak. They build. They re-story.
Therapist as Witness in the Imaginal Field
Avatar therapy holds a mirror to the imaginal psyche. It is theater, ritual, and guided reverie. A re-entry into symbolic time. The therapist’s role, then, is not to interpret too quickly, but to walk alongside—to enter the meadow, the mountain, the skybox—and listen.
In one session, Alice brought Wendy into the therapy room—not metaphorically, but literally, via laptop and air card. As Wendy walked through a home she had built in the virtual world, it became clear: she had recreated the house where Alice was abused as a child. Yet this time, the house was different. Safe. Playful. Full of color, cupcakes, and celebration.
Corrective Experience Through the Avatar Lens
This is the symbolic capacity of the avatar. Through Wendy, Alice experienced what Jung called a corrective emotional experience within the imaginal realm. Not a dissociative break—but a return to soul. In later sessions, Wendy rewrote the ending. At age twelve, she had a birthday party instead of trauma. Balloons floated in the kitchen. Maggie, her best friend, lived across the street.
These symbolic gestures were not pretend. They were real in the only place that matters—the psyche. Like dreamwork, like sand tray, like art therapy, avatar work makes the inner visible. But here, it’s animated, chosen, and interactive.
Virtual Sandplay and the IFS Parallel
In fact, avatar therapy can be understood as a form of virtual sandplay. Just as clients in sand tray therapy place figures and symbols into a physical box of sand to externalize their inner world, clients in avatar therapy craft immersive, dynamic landscapes in which parts of the self can come alive. And much like Internal Family Systems (IFS) encourages a relationship with one’s inner parts, avatar therapy can offer a visual and embodied experience of those parts—whether as child, protector, exile, or manager. The parts don’t just speak; they move, build, and interact. They live.
The Therapist’s Role: Holding the Container in Virtual Space
Therapists trained in this modality must understand the nuances of emotional titration, containment, and disinhibition. Because virtual spaces can accelerate disclosure, evoke trauma, and amplify transference, skillful presence is essential. But so is symbolic fluency—the ability to recognize when the child walking through digital grass is not a distraction, but the beginning of the sacred.
The Double-Edged Power of Virtual Healing
Exploring the subconscious is central to therapeutic and coaching work, and avatars can offer a surprisingly direct path inward. In a virtual environment, people may find themselves expressing hidden aspects of their psyche—sometimes accessing deep stories of the past that might otherwise remain inaccessible. This freedom to create and embody a new self can feel liberating, playful, and profoundly healing.
At the same time, stepping into a virtual world can stir vulnerability. For some, the sudden surfacing of unresolved trauma or repressed emotion may feel overwhelming. Without a supportive guide or structured process, reliving past wounds through an avatar can risk retraumatization. The work may appear as “play,” yet what emerges is often a very real part of the psyche demanding attention.
The difference between disintegration and integration often lies in the presence of containment. With therapeutic support, the avatar persona can serve as an ally—helping the individual navigate powerful emotions, integrate inner parts, and move toward wholeness. For some, the journey may involve creating and ultimately releasing an avatar; for others, continuing the relationship with their virtual self may offer ongoing guidance.
Avatars, then, are more than digital creations. They can be vessels of both growth and disruption, revealing that the path to inner healing often includes paradox—the possibility of both chaos and clarity, rupture and repair.
Healing at the Edges of the Real
Virtual therapy is no longer novel. It’s a tool—one among many—for soul retrieval in a fractured age. As Jung noted, “The symbols of the self arise in the depths of the soul, and they lead us beyond ourselves.” In today’s world, sometimes those symbols log in, build a house, and throw a birthday party.
We are wise to follow them.
References:
Nagel, D.M & Anthony, K. (2010). “Alice in VirtualLand”. Therapeutic Innovations in Light of Technology, Vol 1 (1): 16-27
Nagel, D. & Anthony, K. (2011). Avatar Therapy. The CAPA Quarterly, Counsellors and Psychotherapists Association of NSW Inc. Australia. Issue 3, pp. 6-9.
Nagel, D,M. & Anthony, K. (2011). Reflections on ayya’s journey. In J. Spingern-Koff & C. Berz (Eds.) Life 2.0 viewer’s guide (pp.12-14). L 2 Film, LLC.
Online Coaching and Therapy: Giving Rise to Numinous Moments
