We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Anthony Bean a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Anthony, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. We’re complete cheeseballs and so we love asking folks to share the most heartwarming moment from their career – do you have a touching moment you can share with us?

A child named Greg came into my office in a constant state of mistrust in his current surroundings, including his family. Greg was socially isolating himself and withdrawing from his parents at home. Additional concerns were his traumatic background including physical and verbal abuse, his traumatic abuse difficulty with his biological mother, and complications with social isolation at times in many facets of life. For example, Greg had close friends at school, but would become anxious and worried when physical altercations occurred. An example had been when his friends began play fighting with him at school, Greg became anxious and wanted to leave the area and his friends out of a fearful reaction to the aggression his friends were demonstrating. Greg had additionally been unable to trust anyone besides his step-mother and biological father because he had been “hurt too many times in the past” including by a previous therapist. His past therapist had been able to build rapport with him and earn his trust, but had lost it when the therapist sided with his biological mother on visitation rights. Greg had seen this as a major problem due to his past altercations with his mother and felt abandoned. As a result, Greg became angry and refused to talk to the therapist any longer. His parents worried about his condition as a consequence.
As a result of his past, Greg became curious and immersed with the video game worlds, specifically Garry’s Mod and the Borderlands trilogy. He would play them or discuss them as he got home from school, when he had any additional free time, or with his friends. He became obsessed with the aspect of playing his character and “being good.” Greg’s parents expressed a worry about the video game worlds he chose to play in, but were unsure about the consequences.
I knew I had to build a great amount of rapport very quickly with him. He had lost rapport with this previous counselor because he felt abandoned and that his previous counselor was not working in his best interest. He expressed that playing video games provided a cathartic experience for him and I identified it gave him helpful coping styles. His father was playing the video games with him and helping him process the emotional content found within each virtual game. Through exploration of motivations we were able to hone in on a specific game to which he attributed much of his coping mechanisms and ability to process information. He said he felt powerful and meaningful within the virtual realm of this game. This videogame was part of a trilogy of video games called the Borderlands series and he played the entire series.
Through the multiple games of the series Greg was able to identify the progression of the characters in the video games and place them in sequential order even though they did not come out in that order. In actuality, the games came out at different times and across different worlds, but Greg continually played the same character or avatar within the virtual videogame in all three of the playable scenarios or virtual realms. During our analysis of his characters played Greg came to the realization that he was playing a heroic journey continued throughout all three of the different video games.
Through examination of Greg’s conscious thoughts, choices within the videogame, and experiences outside of the videogame, we were able to identify and work on his own personal heroic journey. This occurred very quickly because of knowledge that I had of the videogame and I was able to relate it to his personal experience, including his trauma. Even with this personal knowledge of the video game, it was imperative I suggest themes and archetypal play that I, as the therapist, saw through his video gaming experience. The reason for this was because I may have seen different archetypes that may not have been present for Greg and thus would not have been true of his virtual and real life experiences. If I continued to force different archetypes or experiences upon him that did not synchronize with his view of himself, then they would not be meaningful or have any relevance to his experience. This would be an example of therapists forcing their ideals upon the client and not necessarily listening to the client’s experience; this would have hurt our rapport, but also would have impeded our work in allowing his experience of the video game to unfold. The important matter at hand was to find the experience that created a deeper connection in order to properly understand and allow Greg to consciously identify with his character(s). As a result, after multiple analyzations of his game play, he felt as if he played the video games to understand his personal heroic journey. We discussed the heroic journey he had to go through in each of the video games and how he experienced them. In addition, there was another main character that was not playable, but was in all three virtual realms. His name was Handsome Jack.
We discussed Handsome Jack at length. Our first interpretation of Handsome Jack was an explanation of where he may have gone wrong in his thinking and greed. We were able to determine in the first videogame he was a hero working for the cause of good by helping out the players through the sales of in-game items and hints at where to explore next. In the second game, Greg was able to decipher that Handsome Jack had begun to change in his thoughts and patterns when talking to people (the players) and acting out through maladaptive behaviors and uncordial words. Finally in the third installment, Handsome Jack became the villain; you had to have a final showdown with him in order to beat the game.
Working together we were able to look at the timeline of the heroic journey of Greg himself, and Handsome Jack. We discussed the archetype of the hero, which Greg was playing, and the archetype of the villain, Handsome Jack, who was heroic in a different sense but much smaller-minded and tunnel-visioned. Upon further discussions and Greg’s personal analyzations of the composition of a hero and a villain, we were able to determine that a villain was just a misguided hero in Greg’s eyes. Overlapping this new distinction for Greg provided differential insight into his videogame play. Furthermore, we overlaid the general concepts found within the videogame to his actual life and trauma, discussing how he had found his own personal hero, and how his anger was Greg’s own personal villain. Whenever he became angry and lost control, his villain side was coming out because he could only see one thing, his anger and narrow-mindedness. However, his hero-side shined through much more often than his villain-side. Once he was able to understand when his villain part of his own personal hero myth was approaching within his cognitions, behaviors, and words, he was able to put a stop to it. He was able to begin to understand when his personal villain was approaching consciousness and was able to take a step back to control his maladaptive emotions. He understood why it was happening and was able to make a meaningful memory and knowledge from it all because he had the virtual experience to rely on from play the Borderlands Trilogy.
Greg was eventually able to see that his resilience in being a hero: having to overcome such a travesty, being able to push through it and continue on in life, and the knowledge that he has many supporters in his life enabled him to let go of most of the anger. (In truth, this is where most of his drive had come from over his life and will continue to come from for an extended period of time in his life.) Greg, having been set on his personal journey of understanding his own resilience and personal heroism, was then ready to leave the therapy room and begin to mold his myth of being his own personal hero. His video game play had been instrumental in his post traumatic growth from his previous trauma. His avatars and preferred play were an outlet for him to grow and feel empowered to continue forward with his life.
I was given an opportunity to hear about his updated progress a few months later. His parents reported that Greg appeared to be more outgoing, understanding his emotions on a greater expanse and level, and that he was making new friends and allowing his experience to unfold naturally. His parents reported he used to “hold back” in conversations and “be unsure of himself.” They reported being amazed at his transition in school, friendships, family life, and attributed it to the different interventions applied during our therapy sessions. Luckily, his parents were willing and constantly there to help him transition and understand the video game and its applications to his real life; this appears to have been transformational for Greg. Without their extended help it may have been a slower transition overall. His parents provided crucial interventions at home to help with the processing of his emotional and physical trauma through his playing of video games.
Video games have powerful and transformational archetypes embedded in them as playable characters. These manifestations are not solely found in virtual realms, but are born of the essences of their own manifestations. This is what makes video games, their characters, the storylines, and the back story of the game so transformational and enticing. The player is given the chance to wield magic, hunt in the woods from afar, get into the face of the enemy with their sword or axe and strike fear into their hearts. While fantasy can provide a different place to claim a unique lifestyle the video game allows you to experience it while still living life, anyone should jump at the chance to experience a rebirth. The playing of the game in itself is not detrimental, but an opportunity to begin anew or become more stout in one’s resolve teaching the player different opportunistic abilities and rules to which we all live by, but have the regale of a story and hero behind it.

Anthony, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

Dr. Anthony Bean is a licensed clinical psychologist, video game researcher, and executive director at the Telos Project, a nonprofit mental health clinic in Fort Worth, Texas. Dr. Bean holds a doctorate in philosophy from Pacifica Graduate Institute, with an emphasis in depth psychology, and teaches at Framingham State University in the psychology department. He specializes in the therapeutic implications of video games and gaming, working with children and adolescents, and the use of video game character identification as a therapeutic technique and passes on his knowledge of Geek Therapy at Geek Therapeutics; an APA/NBCC/ACE/APT accredited company training professionals on how to use Geek Therapy in practice. He has authored multiple academic articles, book chapters, and the books Working with Video Gamers and Games in Therapy: A Clinician’s Guide; The Psychology of Zelda: Linking Our World to the Legend of Zelda Series; The Psychology of Final Fantasy: Surpassing the Limit Break, and Integrating Geek Culture into Therapeutic Practice: A Clinician’s Guide to Geek Therapy. Dr. Bean works with children, adolescents, and adults who play video games and their families to better understand the immersive psychological effects video games have upon the individual and the resulting family dynamics. Using video game character identification techniques and other archetypal experiences, Dr. Bean guides them in understanding intrinsic motivations for playing, developing personal identity, and discovering conscious and unconscious conflicts, cognitions, and behaviors. He works with his clients on discovering their own symbolic transformations through the playing of video games, and on dealing with depression, trauma, anxiety, social isolation, and other common diagnoses, to great success. He has been consulted as an expert for CNN, Wired, Facebook, Inverse, Polygon, and internationally for Gehirn & Geist, while also appearing on Radio, Podcasts, and being a sought after Keynote Speaker and conference speaker in the United States, Canada, and Russia.

Training and knowledge matter of course, but beyond that what do you think matters most in terms of succeeding in your field?

The cultural competency of Geek Therapy allows clients to thrive heavily in a medium that has them understand their own nature, ideas, and hopes.

Training and knowledge matter of course, but beyond that what do you think matters most in terms of succeeding in your field?

Grit, perseverance. Resilience

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