If you’re in the midst of a personal crisis and trying to figure out the best solution, here’s a trick that just might help you find the answer: Pretend you’re Sigmund Freud, and give yourself the same counsel you’d expect to get from the father of psychoanalysis.

That’s the idea behind a new University of Barcelona study, which found that a small group of male study participants who adopted Freud’s avatar in a virtual reality scenario gave themselves better psychological advice than when the used their own avatars.