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Psychotherapy through Imagery by David Tansey, Ph.D., The use of visual imagery based on an understanding of the human personality can be a powerful tool to facilitate change in individuals. For over twenty-five years and continuing to the present, my mentor Joseph E. Shorr has developed his use of imagery as a psychotherapeutic and diagnostic tool. Shorr based his work on the personality theories of H. S. Sullivan and R.D.Laing. To briefly summarize these theoretical underpinnings, we must remember that Sullivan proposed an interpersonal theory of personality development. He believed that if, in the first year of life, the infant experienced security, this is acceptance, love and warmth from the mothering person, then the infant learned to experience itself as a "good me". This became the healthy, true, real self of the person. However, when there was lack of security, this is when the child experienced rejection and felt anxiety and separation from the mother, then the child learned to think of itself as a "bad me". This neurotic, alien personality could be experienced with the same, or greater, force as the healthy, true personality and in clinical practice this is what we see. Later developments reinforce this first-year self, as the developing personality learns ways to maintain the "me" it has come to believe it is. Sullivan called these behaviors, intended to protect and preserve the "me" and avoid disturbing the status quo, "security operations". In effect, they lead to selective inattention to fit the self, as learned, into whatever data is presented later on. So as developing persons we look into others and see ourselves. Similarly, R. D. Laing teaches us that every child is told who and what to be and not to be, what to feel and not to feel, by significant others in its life. Hence, our identity is conferred on us, even if we don’t internally agree. There may be conflict between our alien identity and our true identity, our identity conferred by lack of security and rejection versus our identity conferred by security and acceptance. Each person constantly seeks confirmation of their identity and acknowledgement of their existence. Thus, each person constantly seeks to make a difference to another. To fail to make a difference, to fail to be confirmed, leads to anxiety and panic. A sequence of humiliations, that is failures to make a difference on the basis of true identity, leads to withdrawal, isolation, and a strategy to maintain some identity, even the false one. As children, we adopt a false position as a strategy for survival. In effect, we ask, "How can I get you to confirm me? - I’ll do it, even if it’s alien." These "security operations" continue until the conflict is exposed and resolved. The goals of therapy in this context are to define one’s self as one’s true self and not the alien one, and to define one’s self as we are in reality, that is as we are in our love and acceptance-based personalities without undermining or other misidentification. So, as therapists, we ask this client, "How do you define yourself at this time, or is someone else defining you?" That is, we want to know how the person feels defined, or misdefined, by others. Are they making a difference? To whom? At what price? We want to help that person change his/her self-definition from negative to positive. It is the integrated, negative self-image that must be changed for healthier functioning. The client in therapy may have an idealized image he can’t live up to, or a despised image she can’t face. The client has to spend energy against these definitions by others and against non-sequitur accusations. The process flows from exposing the way of the alien definition, to denying the truth of the alien definition, to demanding the truth of the self-definition, leading the client to where he/she can be self-defined in more adaptive terms than previously. To do this kind of work, the therapist must share the phenomenology of the client. Phenomenology here means a shared perception of how you view the world, how I view the world, how I see myself, how I see you, how I see you seeing me, to endless expansion like barber shop mirrors, except that distortions tend to grow rather than vanish. The therapist must see inside of how the client sees the world. This empathic sharing of worldview, combined with trust growing out of professional emotional involvement of the client and the therapist, is the sine qua non of change. Imagery is the link through which we can share worldviews as therapist and client, the link between subjective meaning and phenomenology. Imagery gives an in-view of the client’s style, world organization and individual differences. Because imagery is less likely to have been previously punished, it is less subject to unconscious censorship. While clients may manipulate their own verbal reports, they can’t disavow the image, once shared. Hence, imagery may be used as an investigative tool, to open action, to allow experimental behavior, all in the psychotherapeutic alliance and encounter. We give an image and let it develop in dialogue, wondering what is open: what is the client ready to face, to deny: where is the client going? The intent of the therapist is to push the client to his capacity to deal with problematic situations. Most commonly, the imagery used ultimately develops an understanding of the bipolarization of internal conflict of the complimentary or uncomplimentary opposites within the experience of the personality divided against itself. With the bipolarization clarified, the client can move toward internal unity by the accomplishment of appropriate tasks. Sometimes the tasks may be imaginary, and task imagery used. Mail: 591 Camino De La Reina, Suite 620Telephone: (619) 692-3355 FAX: (619) 481-1004 |
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