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What happens when the technology meant to entertain us begins to unravel the mind?
In a near future where immersive virtual reality has triggered a global epidemic of psychological collapse, three psychiatrists - the exuberant Dr. Low, the phlegmatic Dr. Hai, and the pedantic Dr. Midel - pioneered a radical cure: fighting the disease with its own source. By sending patients back into reconstructed virtual worlds with rewritten endings, they built careers out of healing the unhealable.
Years later, the three friends reunite for an evening of wine, shrimp, and storytelling. One by one, they share their most unforgettable cases - each one stranger and more moving than the last. A gifted composer who believes artificial intelligence has made him obsolete. A brilliant artist whose four wildly different painting styles turn out to have four very different authors - all living inside the same body. A lawyer who cannot tell his most spectacular courtroom victory from a dream. A boy of eight consumed by the most ancient fear a thinking mind can face. A man who sees conspiracy encoded in every coincidence, every dripping faucet, every seagull's cry.
Blending dark humor with genuine psychological insight, Virtual Treatment explores the fragile architecture of identity, the nature of fear, and the strange courage required to be a human being. Part science fiction, part case study, part fireside confession - this is a book about the minds we inhabit and the stories we tell ourselves to survive them.
For readers of Oliver Sacks, Philip K. Dick, and anyone who has ever wondered: who, exactly, is in charge up there?
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