Boundaries of Self and Reality Online: Implications of Digitally Constructed Realities - Tapa dura

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Dr. Gackenbach received her Ph.D.in 1978 in Experimental Psychology from Virginia Commonwealth University. She is currently a Professor at MacEwan University. She has taught and done research at the post-secondary level both in the US and in Canada for 40 years.

As well as being a past-president of the International Association for the Study of Dreams, she has numerous professional publications and on dreams and in the last decade on video game play. Dr. Gackenbach is editor of “Sleep and Dreams: A Sourcebook” (1986) for Garland Publishers. She co-edited “Conscious Mind, Sleeping Brain: Perspectives on Lucid Dreaming” (1988) for Plenum Publishers; “Dream Imagery: A Call to Mental Arms” (1991) for Baywood Publishers. Her first authored book is “Control Your Dreams” (1989; 2012) for Harper-Collins. She was invited in 1992 to present her work on lucid dreaming to the Dalai Lama at a conference on sleeping, dreaming, and dying.

Dr. Gackenbach’s interests have shifted to computer-mediated communications. In this regard she has edited a book from Academic Press (1998; 2007), “Psychology and the Internet: Intrapersonal, Interpersonal, and Transpersonal Implications” and co-wrote a book called “cyber.rules” for Norton publishers (2007) with examines healthy and unhealthy internet use.

Dr. Gackenbach’s most recent research interest combines her dream and technology interests examining the dreams of video game players. She has released two related books. One was co-written with her gamer son, Teace Snyder, on the effects of video game play, “Play Reality”. She also has an edited book “Video Game Play and Consciousness” from NOVA publishers. Both books came out in 2012. She has pursued an active research program into gaming and dreams expanding it in recent years to include social media usage. Over her 40 year career she has 54 peer reviewed articles, 31 book chapters and 10 books with two translated into Chinese, one into German and one into Arabic.

The central question that has permeated her work over her 40-year career is, “what is real?” Be it in dreams or in technology, the nature of reality and its phenomenal experience by humans has been a compelling question.

Mr. Bown is registered with the Canadian Counselling and Psychotherapy Association as well as the College of Alberta Psychologists. He practices from the Humanistic approach of psychotherapy and promotes a holistic approach to wellbeing. He has published on mindfulness practices in gaming, presence in video gaming, and the incorporation of game content into dreams. In 2015, he published “Video games, nightmares, and emotional processing” in the edited book, Emotions and Technology through Elsevier. Mr. Bown has also presented posters at The Banff Annual Seminal in Cognitive Science (2009) and at Towards a Science of Consciousness (2010). Recently, he has created and facilitated an online workshop for nurses on the topic of sexual addition (2016) through Alberta Society for the Promotion of Sexual Health, as well as presented on similar topics at the Biennial Western Canadian Conference of Sexual Health (2016).