This continuing education course article is organized as follows. First, the underlying assumptions regarding the use of technologies to enhance psychotherapy are briefly discussed (Section 2). Next, the term ‘advanced technologies’ is clarified, to place the material in this article within the broader context of existing and emerging tech­nologies which have relevance for clinical practice (Section 3). Next, three categories of advanced technologies are described: virtual agents and social robots (Section 4), serious affective games (Section 5), and virtual and augmented reality systems (Section 6). For each of these, examples of state-of-the-art are presented, the benefits for clinical practice are summarized, the limitations are discussed, and research issues and challenges associated with their use and further development are outlined. Ethical considerations, including privacy issues, are then discussed (Section 7). The article concludes with a summary and conclusions, including important “take away” points for practitioners, researchers, and policy makers and educators (Section 8). 

Learning Objectives:

1. Become familiar with recent findings from the affective sciences and their relevance to clinical social work practice.  

2. Gain an understanding of the emerging theoretical frameworks regarding emotion and cognition-emotion interactions, and their relevance for psychotherapy, including: cognitive appraisal in emotion generation, affective biases on cognition, affect regulation, embodied emotion, and emotion contagion.  

3. Gain an appreciation of the significant individual and cultural differences in affective processing and expression, and the implications of these differences for clinical practice.