• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.22 no.4
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• pp.1-12
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• 2022

Since the early 20th century, along with the interest and development of alternative psychotherapy, the field of art therapy has also been developed and expanded. In particular, the recent development of technology and the untact era brought about by the COVID-19 Pandemic is accelerating the development of new digital art therapy contents. Among them, the hot interest in virtual reality is raising expectations and questions about the effectiveness of psychotherapy given by new media beyond traditional art therapy. In this study, the characteristics of VRAT (Virtual Reality Art Therapy) content therapeutic factors were investigated through qualitative literature analysis based on the conceptual framework and therapeutic components of ETC (Expressive Therapies Continumm), an integrated art therapy theory. As a result of the study, VRAT contents showed mostly therapeutic factors in the left hemisphere that triggered the user's dynamic, perceptual, and cognitive factors, and the therapeutic factors in the right hemisphere, which focused on sensory, emotional, and symbolic factors, were relatively few. The reason seems to be due to the nature of the experimental stage, the absence of active intervention by the therapist and long-term session composition, and the fear, clumsiness, and unfamiliarity of users about VRAT in addition to the characteristics and technical limitations of the VRAT medium. The limitations of the study include the small number of documents to be analyzed and the insufficient form of current VRAT to be called art therapy. It is expected that the characteristics of the therapeutic factors of VRAT content media and environment derived as a result of this study will be usefully used for the appropriate development of VRAT content in the future.