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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Michael Tree" data-source="post: 598226" data-attributes="member: 1455">I'm a doctoral student in clinical psychology, with experience as a therapist, so I'll try to answer these from a psychologist's point of view.Others have rightly pointed out that theraputic roleplaying doesn't involve pretending to be someone else, but to practice responding to social situations in the safety of the therapist's office.  For example, if a person is having problems communicating their feelings with their spouse, they could roleplay talking to them with the therapist playing the role of the spouse.  Another example would be a person who gets anxious when meeting new people.  That person could roleplaying meeting a new person, to practice social skills that he has learned in the therapy and to reduce the anxiety through practice.Definitely.  Unless you are perfect (and if you believe you are perfect, you probably have problems <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f600.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":D" title="Big grin    :D"  data-smilie="8"data-shortname=":D" /> ) there is always something to work on.  Most people who see psychologists aren't certifiable in the Hollywood sense.  Many have problems relating to family and friends, or have anxiety over some everyday events, or have found themselves "in a rut" that they don't know how to get out of, or feel dissatisfied with their life and/or don't know where they're headed.  Also note that therapy doesn't just involve "learning from yourself", though that is a major part of some forms of therapy.  There's also a lot of behavioral analysis - determining the outside factors that influence your feelings and behavior, analysis of the social systems you live in with all the various influences and interactions, and training in social skills and coping skills.  As an analogy, there are as many forms of therapy as there are of RPGs.  Assuming that all therpay is of the Freudian "tell me about your mother" type is akin to assuming that all RPG games are of the "bash down the door, kills the monster, and take their stuff" type.Most psychologists wouldn't have a clue what the person's talking about, unless the therapost is a gamer.  This isn't a big deal though, as it's not uncommon for clients to use analogies that their therapist isn't familar with.  For example, one patient of mine described the way they felt in terms of a specific problem with a car engine.  I know nothing about automotive mechanics, so we had to find another analogy that made sense to both of us.If a client of mine described themselves in terms of an alignment, I would ask them why they thought they were that alignment.  Gamers rarely agree what the different alignments stand for, and in any case what the person belives about themselves is far more important than the label they use. If you mean something like "sure I acted badly, but then I'm CN so that's how I should act", then I would be concerned about their reality testing abilities.  A person who uses a construct from a fictional game in real life may be lacking important judgement about the seperation of real things from imaginary things.  (This is not neccessarily the case though.  It could also be that the person is using alignment to justify their actions to themselves, or numerous other possibilities).In any case, I would ask them further questions why they believed that their "alignment" justified their actions.  Again, the label that they use to justify a behavior isn't nearly as important as the reasoning they used to achieve that label.I'm curious why you said that psychology is confused.  Psychology gets a weird treatment in the media, so most people have a distorted view of what it's all about.  (As an analogy, how close is D&D's portrayal in movies, TV shows, and the news to the actual realities of playing D&D?)</blockquote>

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