The Psychology of Cyberspace - Home Page/Tabl...

Jump menu for this book ------------------------- Home page/Table of contents Article index Subject index Search Copyright & how to cite Comments from readers Best viewing of this book ------------------------- Life at the Palace Psychotherapy section ------------------------ About John Suler Speaking topics John's Blog Rider University --------------------------
John Suler, Ph.D.Department of PsychologyScience and Technology Center
Rider University
This hypertext book explores the psychological aspects of environments created by computers and online networks. It presents an evolving conceptual framework for understanding how people react to and behave within cyberspace: what I call "the psychology of cyberspace" - or simply "cyberpsychology." Continually being revised and expanded, this hypertext book originally was created in January of 1996. See thearticle index which indicates the articles most recently added and revised.
In order to make these readings accessible to as many people as possible, I have written them in a style that is not overly abstract or technical. Important concepts in psychology and psychoanalytic theory appear throughout the book, but I try to present them in an "experience-near" rather than "experience-distant" way that I hope makes them useful in understanding everyday living in cyberspace. The emphasis is on practical concepts rather than purely academic ones. Other versions of these articles appear in various professional journals. These publications are indicated within the articles and in thearticle index. Below is the table of contents for the seven major sections in this book. Clicking on a bullet will produce a pop-up window containing an abstract of the article in that section. To use this feature, you may need to turn off any pop-up blockers in your browser. All links on this home page produce a new window that is placed on top of this page. The graphic that appears to the right of each of the seven sections below is a link to the part of the overview article that summarizes the articles within that section. CE Credit is available for some of the articles in this book. For more information see this page about thePsyBC program.The Psychology of Cyberspace Blog Companion: As a companion reader to this online book, I use my blog to give readers an inside view of a cyberpsychologist's life and the day-to-day issues we deal with. What is it like to study how people behave online? What issues are my colleagues and the media talking about?
The First Decade of CyberPsychology: My observations on the 10th anniversary of this online book.
Overview and "Guided Tour"
The Basic Psychological Qualities of Cyberspace
Cyberspace as a psychological space
Basic psychological features of cyberspace
Networks as "mind" and "self"
Presence
The online disinhibition effect
Psychology of avatars and graphical space
Cyberspace as dream world
Two Paths of Virtual Reality
The black hole of cyberspace
Online lingo
Internet demographics
Cyberspace humor
Coping with spam

The Psychology of the Individual in Cyberspace
Identity managment in cyberspace
Personality types in cyberspace
Unique roles in cyberspace
Transference to computers and cyberspace
Addiction to computers and cyberspace
Regressive behavior in cyberspace
Online gender-switching
Adolescents in cyberspace
Wizards: The heart of an online community
On being a "god"
Y2K and apocalyptic thinking
Integrating online and offline livingeQuest: An online psychoeducational program Media transitions

The Psychology of Cyberspace Relationships
In-person versus cyberspace relationships
Transient and long term online relationships
The psychology of text relationships
Hypotheses about online text relationships
E-mail communication and relationships
Transference among people online
How to resolve conflict online
Cyberspace romances
Subtlety in multimedia chat

Group Dynamics in Cyberspace
Social psychology of online groups
Developmental stages of mailing lists
Making virtual communities work
Early history of an online community
Wizards: The heart of an online community
Therapy and support groups in cyberspace
Unique groups in cyberspace
TextTalk: Communicating with typed text chat
A decision-making method for e-mail groups
Extending a work group into cyberspace
Using discussion boards in teaching
Group games using avatars
Geezer Brigade: Studying an online group
Managing deviant behavior in online groupsOnline photo-sharing communities (flickr)
 
 
 

Research Methods in Cyberpsychology
Publishing online
Case studies of digital life forms
One of Us: Participant observation research
Steps in studying an online group
Ethics in cyberspace research
Studying full cyberspace immersion

This section of The Psychology of Cyberspace contains a collection of articles about my intensive case study of the online multimedia community known as the "Palace." The Palace is a visual and spatial environment where members interact with text, sounds, and graphical representations of themselves called "avatars." It also contains an article aboutSecond Life.

This section contains articles that cover a range of topics, including: a conceptual model for conducting clinical work in cyberspace; online clinical case study groups; clinical work in online communities; avatar psychotherapy; computerized psychotherapy; legal and ethical issues. For those who are interested in rounding out their education about psychotherapy in cyberspace, this section also contains a list of suggested readings in the Psychology of Cyberspace and elsewhere on the web.

Article and Page Index
a list of the articles on this site by date of publication/revision
Subject Index
alphabetized list of subjects and terms appearing in the articlesSearch Engine
search for key words
in Suler's publications
The Psychology of Cyberspace Blog Companion
As a companion reader to this online book, I use my blog to give readers an inside view of a cyberpsychologist's life and the day-to-day issues we deal with. What is it like to study how people behave online? What issues are my colleagues and the media talking about?
http://users.rider.edu/~suler/psycyber/psycyber.html