Controls of Visual Imagery and Therapist Intervention

Abstract

Visual imagery has been a part of therapeutic intervention throughout recorded medical history. Dreams, for example, were prominent moments in the treatment afforded supplicants at the Aesculapian temples of ancient Greece. Recently, there has been a surge of widely varied imagery techniques in many brands of psychotherapy (Singer, 1974). The use of any of these imagery techniques usually means a shift in how patients control their visual mode of representation. Their regulatory processes are altered because of interventions by the therapist. Such interventions may be interpretive as in classical psychoanalytic psychotherapy. Interpretations tell the person what they are doing. The focus of attention on the specified process or content leads to altered controls, especially if volitional effort is added. Interventions may also be directive. The person is told how to alter his volitional control over the stream of thought. This chapter offers a theoretical model for understanding the visual mode of representation, the controls that influence depiction of ideas in this form, and the way that interpretations or directions alter visual thinking and subjective experience.