If you were to try and fix a momentary case of the blues or solve a personal problem, who would you be better off talking to? Yourself or Dr Sigmund Freud?

Spanish researchers, in a cheeky virtual reality experiment, suggest the better option is to do both.

And they say it works so well, that mental health clinicians could prescribe virtual reality Freud sessions as a low-cost answer to solving life’s minor problems – or as a way of practicing healthier ways of thinking.