Emotion-Image Therapy. Analysis and Implementation
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– It’s difficult to say… But often after a baby is born in the mother’s psyche the conflicts that happened in her parents’ family may come to the surface, because involuntarily she sees herself in her baby. Do you have a girl?
– Yes… My father abandoned the family when I was a year and a half.
– May be a program lives within you that when a baby is a year and a half you must divorce your husband… But I am not sure.
– True, I divorced my first husband when my baby was a year and four months.
– If it is so we can say with confidence that you are following this program.
– And why I hate him more and more?
– You simply want to have an emotional basis for the ready-made decision.
– Goodness gracious! [She grips her head], What a horrible woman I am! What should I do? Is it possible to correct the situation?
– Come to my séance. We don’t have any time now.
Commentary. She didn’t come to the séance, and I am not aware of the distant results of this short analyses. I hope she was sensible enough not to spoil her own and another person’s life, proceeding from scenarios acquired in her childhood. I am sorry I didn’t ask her about what her mother told her about her father and I didn’t interpret the execution of a man in her dream as realization of her hatred of her father because he left her… Then it could be clear that her hatred toward her husband is a typical example of a transfer, and it would help her to overcome these feelings. But had very little time…
The reason why it is difficult to use dreams is that not everybody remembers his dreams or remembers only a part of them. Dreams have lots of details, many different images, sometimes even a number of stories. To decipher content of dreams takes a lot of time and ends in realization, but not every time it leads to cure or to taking the right decision. In the EIT the interpretation of an image is just the beginning of the way to the solution of the problem and the change of the state of the client.
Consciousness is a part of the mental area of psyche, but the problem lies in feelings rooted in subconsciousness. Consciousness can’t be permeated by feelings but this is necessary for real changes. It is specially created this way to be a dispassionate observer. The realization must be accompanied by some remorse that is by the desire to change, to remake everything. This is the understanding of your mistakes filled with sincere feelings. But this is not all, you must really do something with your feeling which don’t obey your reason. The heart is still loving or hating, you still want something forbidden, you are still feeling pain because someone hurt you… What can be done with it? Psychoanalyses relies only on new insights, on a thorough work on the whole life history from the viewpoint of the basic conflict, on ever more profound realization.
In this sense the EIT has some analytical and corrective advantages over the psychological method of dreams interpretations. We ask the client to create a spontaneously emerging image the one that expresses the emotion which is the clue to his problem [more details are below]. So the created image, as a rule, fully corresponds to the essence of the problem, its interpretation is not really difficult and proves “to hit the aim”. Naturally this a bit of a simplification. Not infrequently the work with the EIT turns into a long analytical work with all the “intricacies” of the traditional analyses. Besides, the created image makes it possible to do the corrective work at once guided by the same image. As the image is associatively connected with emotion adequate influence on it will automatically tell on the emotion fixing the problem. As soon as the emotion disappears the problem stops existing any longer. The client thinks that he works with his image but in actual fact he works on himself. Let me give the examples of such quick work in two claustrophobic cases.
Example 6. “A little hedgehog and a drum”
At an instructing seminar a woman psychologist asked me to help her get rid of claustrophobia: “It is not so bad, but all doors in my home are taken off”, -she said. The problem emerged after her baby was born, and the baby was seriously ill during a year.
I asked her to imagine that she was in some closed up space, a room, for instance, and to tell me about her feelings. She replied that even just imagining the situation she is very nervous; her hands are shaking and her heart is throbbing. It is difficult to bear this state. Then I asked her to imagine the image of this feeling right in front of her. Without a long consideration, she said that for some reason it was like a small hedgehog who was beating a drum with wooden sticks. At first sight it is nonsense, how can claustrophobia look like a small hedgehog with a drum? However, a hedgehog is always a man, and a small hedgehog – a boy. I asked:” Have you got a boy?” and the answer was affirmative. Then it became clear that the mother’s worrying about her sickly son brought about the fear of closed up spaces where she couldn’t control what was happening to him. And the drum is the mother’s heart that is worrying about the hedgehog.
And how can this problem be solved? Obviously, the fear about the baby is connected with the customary feeling that he is helpless and needs her control. So I proposed:” Obey me, and later I will explain everything to you. In your mind tell the hedgehog that you allow him to be healthy and independent and not to need you support and constant control”. She repeated this in her mind several times, feeling better and better. Soon she saw that the hedgehog dropped drum sticks went to another room and played with some toys, he didn’t need her control anymore… Her heart calmed down, her hands stopped shaking. The test by imagining her in a closed-up space showed that she was quite calm, claustrophobia passed. Then I offered her my explanations. All the work took ten minutes. On the following day she confirmed the result.
Example 7. “Claustrophobia”
At the international congress that took place in Ekaterenburg under the auspices of the Professional Psychotherapeutic League I managed to remove claustrophobia during just five minutes. This is how it happened… Before the final meeting after which I had to immediately go to the airport, a colleague of mine came up to me and asked if I could receive her friend who very much hoped to get my help… Only ten minutes were left before the beginning of the meeting…
– Aren’t you staying for two more days? What a pity, and we hoped…
– Invite your friend at once, sometimes you can say something important during ten minutes only…
She ran… and found her friend at another seminar. We took our seats on the center of a large hall, where different lessons were taking place in different parts of the hall.
It turned out that the young woman has been suffering from claustrophobia since her childhood. She is afraid to be in a lift, in a closed room, when there is no one near her. I asked her to imagine herself to be in the lift and to describe the symptoms of her fear. Being in an imagined situation she felt rapid heartbeat and breathing, fear bordering panic, and the coming fainting. I asked her to imagine these symptoms as an image sitting on the chai in front of her. The image was surprisingly calm, not aggressive and fear was not revealed in it. It was some furry creature looking like Winnie the Pooh that was looking at the client with some expectation. It became clear at once that it was a part of the client’s personality that evidently felt a kind of emotional dependence and was waiting for something. And if so it could be the childhood state of the client [the Inner Child], it means that in her childhood the client had some emotional problems, connected, no doubt, with one of the parents, most probably with the mother. If this image is connected with the state of fear, then it is the child’s fear. And what can be the fear of a child who is looking expectantly? Most likely this is the fear of being alone, the fear of being rejected! I pondered a little, and then the client offered:
– Maybe I should send it away? [She didn’t understand that it was the image of herself in her childhood]
– By no means! [The experience shows that such offers express the hidden conflict attitude to the Inner Child]. On the contrary, tell it that you will never leave it never reject it. That you accept it totally as it is. This is for experiment. I will later explain.
– It is getting smaller.
– Repeat the same words one more time… How are you feeling?
– I am feeling better, the fear diminishes. Now it has turned into a wooden doll lying on the chair. [The image of a doll means regression to the age of a suckling baby.]
– Keep on repeating the same…
– Oh! [She looked surprised.] For some reason it got into my breast and dissolved there! [It means that she accepted the Inner Child as a part of her personality and by doing so removed the conflict with her childhood part. If this conflict was really the phobia’s cause, then the feeling of fear must stop.]
– That’s fine, l will explain it to you later. Imagine again that you are in the lift… What are you feeling?
– … [She looks surprised even amazed, as she couldn’t say a word]
– Is there no fear?
– No, there is the expectation of fear…
– This is just the habit, but there is no fear. Your problem has been solved. Your claustrophobia is your childhood fear of being alone. A closed-up space provokes your fears of being alone. Some time ago you probably had some injury. Did your mother do anything in the wrong way? If you wish you can tell me but it is not necessary.
– Yes, I was always afraid to stay alone. If there is somebody near me I am not afraid. In my childhood I was always waiting for my mother’s return from work… [She was crying.]
– Don’t ever send away you Inner Child, he wouldn’t feel alone anymore! Do you like this result?
– Yes, I do! [She rushed to embrace me still crying.]
I wished her all the best in her life, hoping for a future meeting. Still a few minutes were left before the beginning of the meeting, I was not late…
On the next day her friend called ne by cell phone, she confirmed that everything was all right.
These two examples are given to show how quickly and easily the analyses of a psychological problem and its correction can go on with the help of the EIT. As doctors say:” The one who diagnoses well, treats well”. These cases also illustrate the principle, that when you work with the EIT “the cure” happens here and now, if the correcting influence is used adequately. But to be able to get such results one must know a lot, quickly analyze problems and train one’s intuition. The work of the doctor that we can see is only “the above-water part of the iceberg”, its effectiveness is determined by having and correct using of “the under-water part”. So not always things happen so easily and quickly, often the image analysis is long and hard. Not everything depends on the doctor, 80% of success is provided by honest and concerned work of the client.
1. Spontaneuos images
The EIT method is based on the certainty that something accidental doesn’t really happen by accident, and spontaneous images created by the client, that express his feelings and his psychosomatic state, demonstrate exactly the problem which gave rise to this undesirable emotional and psychosomatic state. Every séance confirms this principle as well as all other projective psychological methods.
But the first question that is posed to me during seminars is: “Are all people able to easily produce images?”
Yes, certainly. All people are able to do it. If a person wasn’t able to operate imagined images, he wouldn’t have finished the primary school. There they asked him: “If you have two apples and you give one to Vasja, how many apples are left?” Visually imaginative and visually active thinking is more simple and easier to understand than abstract-verbal. We have already said that images are primary language of our psyche, created by nature itself.
All people have dreams, our psyche creates absolutely ingenious stories, makes “movies” about ourselves, and we must use these abilities. We try to use spontaneous images which are created by the subconsciousness, they are most truthful. For that reason we ask the client to tell us about the very first image that comes to his mind, proceeding from the principle what occurred will do.
Another thing is that not all people want to use the language of images. There are a few categories of inconvenient clients.
1. A highly intellectual man with a technical mindset. This type of people usually tries to speak at an abstract-logical level treating himself as a mechanism. He doesn’t trust freely emerging images, he wants to logically substantiate everything, to work consciously, to discuss versions, to control the process. He is careful not to plunge in the world of emotions, his technical mindset made a comfortable niche where he can avoid any contact with the irrational part of his personality. The problem is that his problems are in the irrational world of emotions, and it’s right there that he doesn’t want to go. According to Sigmund Freud, he is disposed to psychological defense called “intellectualization”. People with obtrusiveness are also disposed to such defense.
Sometimes it helps if you tell such an English anecdote and it is to the point:
A drunk man is looking for something in the park under a street lamp. A policeman comes up to him.
– Sir, what are you looking for here?
– Well, I’ve lost my keys over there, in the park, I can’t get into my house!
– But sir, why are you looking for them here if you lost them there?
– But it is dark there!
You can say that the EIT method gives to the patient a hand flashlight so that he could look for something where it is dark.
2. Any other clients who are suspicious about psychotherapy. They are afraid to trust the doctor, want to expose his incompetence, to contradict him. They perceive therapy like struggle. They realize that creating an image they reveal themselves and it is just this that they are afraid of. You have to spend some time to win his trust and create the atmosphere of cooperation.
3. Clients who create images but don’t associate emotions with them. They discuss and dream up but they don’t feel. They work but as if from the outside towards themselves, which means that nothing happens to their feelings. You must switch over to discussing the reasons why they avoid having real feelings.
In every case when images are difficult for the client to create it is the sigh of some worry [the ways to facilitate creating images are discussed below], or some defense mechanisms. So as psychoanalysts realized before, if you face a defense or resistance you should focus on this defense or resistance. This can be discussed verbally but it is better to ask the client to create the image of the defense preventing the creation of images, to find out how it works and for what purpose and so on.
But in the final analysis, if this method doesn’t suit somebody it only means that he is deprived of the opportunity to use its advantages. If he wants to get the result he must try and if he wants to find a more suitable method then let him try. The choice is very big today, and every person can find what he likes more, what will prove more effective in solving his problem. We don’t claim that we have created a panacea. In medicine in
general a lot of people look for their method and their doctor, even the right diagnosing may be a very complicated task.
The second questioned that is usually asked is where you can find a full list of images and their interpretation. I have already mentioned that there are special reference books on this matter, there is a brief dictionary of images in this book too, but it is not enough. The question should be asked in a different way: how to analyze images? In our method there are no mechanical ways of analysis, the work is always creative, but there are main principles and methods of image analysis.
The following methods may help:
1. The study of sensory qualities of an image. At first the doctor asks the client to describe the image in detail. If it is a tree then what kind of tree it is, trees may be different… If it is a stone then what its form is, its color, its weight. If it is a dwarf then how tall it is, how it is dressed, how his face looks. For example: You said it was a stain. What kind of stain? Stains can be different. Is it big? What about its form, color, consistence?
In determining the character of an image its color is very important. According to the color definitely positive colors are shining, silver, gray, sparkling, transparent, blue, light-blue, golden, rainbow, white, pink and so on. But color alone doesn’t reveal the meaning. Sparkling colors definitely have the emotional tone of joy. All nature images are positive: trees, grass, soil, flowers and so on. Intuitively all people think that black colors are by all means “bad”. This is not true. Black soil, for instance, is quite a positive image. But other black images may simply hide their real meaning. For example, a black imp is the image of a mischievous, naughty child. But doesn’t mean he is bad. “Bad” colors have the tone of poison, they are rotten, annoying, oppressive and so on. The same is true of disharmonious, sounds. So are all stinking smells, like that of burning rubber. Kinesthetic feelings – pressing, causing pain, prickly, tearing feelings, that of something alien. The feeling of emptiness, of being drained, of lacking something.
The main thing is the emotional meaning of an image.
2. The interpretation of the meaning of an image according to past experience. We mean the experience registered in some reliable enough dictionary of images or the experience of the doctor himself, gained during his work with other clients. Often such knowledge helps to solve “a riddle” at once, but as we say – “trust, but check”!
3. The subjective meaning of an image. When an image is quite clear in his mind the doctor starts “to try it on” the symptoms that the client is complaining about. He tries to understand the hidden meaning of the image and the emotional conflict it holds. For example, if you speak of fear, Does the image embody the part of the personality that feels this fear or the dangerous object? What is he afraid of? How does it embody the frustrated demand? And so on. The doctor has already got a primary hypothesis explaining the meaning of the image and its place as a visually expressed emotion. Other information that he got from the client during the preliminary conversation contribute to that.
The qualities of the image can prompt the doctor what kind of problem is expressed in it. For example, if the client imagines Pinocchio, we know that it is a wooden boy, it is an image of the Inner Child. “woodenness” means lack of flexibility, tension in the body, suppression of feelings, mechanical quality of life, stubbornness. Comparing these qualities with the appearance of the client, his life history the doctor may suppose that in his childhood the child was exposed to physical or moral violence, he was intimidated, he was stubborn he was repeatedly punished, but he kept on defending his independence. He didn’t want to study and was inclined to running away from home, to adventurism and demonstrativeness.
You can mace these ideas more precise asking the client about his childhood, some of these ideas may be confirmed some – not.
4. Questions to the image. Following the hypothesis if it hasn’t become the certainty, the doctor asks questions that allow to know the hidden meaning of the image. The client is asked to tell anything that comes to his mind even if it seems a complete nonsense. The most frequent questions are:
– What would the image tell you if it could talk?
– What is it feeling, what is it thinking about?
– What is it doing to you, how does it influence you?
– Why is it doing it, for what purpose? Why is this purpose necessary? And so on.
– What would like to do with it, what would you like to tell it?
– Did you have a man in your life who behaved as this image?
5. Identifying with the image. If the hypothesis doesn’t become clearer, you can ask the client to sit down on the chair on which the image was projected and to imagine himself to be this image. Then you put questions directly to the client who identified himself with the image. Client aren’t always willing to do it; their reluctance means that the image is connected with some very strong negative emotions. But this method of actor-like reincarnation makes it possible to reveal profound subconscious meaning of images. Sometimes the doctor does it to help the client understand something that is already clear to the doctor.
6. The doctor identifies himself with the image or with the client’s role. Sometimes the doctor can sit down on that chair acting as the image or as the client. Becoming the image created by the client the doctor can realize more deeply what its real meaning is, and what the feelings it expresses are. Becoming the client, the doctor can perform true relationships between the client and the image, expose the real conflict. “I will be you and you press on my shoulders as this image does. What are you feeling doing it? Why are you doing it?”
7. Research experiment. In some cases, you can ask the client to tell something to the image, to impact it in some way, in order to see how it will influence the image. If the hypothesis is correct the image will change in the way the doctor expected, otherwise the hypothesis will be specified. Some emotional reactions of the client can be expressed; they will reveal the meaning of the problem. We call it a therapeutic experiment.
Example 8. “Depression from love”
Once a young girl suffering from depression came to me for a consultation. She had been taking medicine for some time already but was getting worse. I found out that before the depression started she had broken up with her boyfriend who was from her point of view “too much of a child” [they both were 18 years old]. She tried to reform his character but failed… I suspected that the problem was the break up with the one she loved, but the girl refused to believe it.
Then I advised her to imagine that the young man was sitting in front of her, and then to tell him that she would love him as he was and wouldn’t reform him. She felt better at once… I asked to repeat those words again and again. The depression passed right before our eyes, but she still refused to believe it. “Tell me honestly, – I asked, -you love him very much, don’t you?” “I do, very much!” – she confessed. When she was leaving she said: “Thank you so much!” The depression disappeared, she stopped taking medicine, the result remained a year later.
Commentary. This case shows that you can use images of real people, not only of emotional states, if this is determined by the hypothesis and the supposed solution of the problem.
8. Creating additional image. You often have to create additional images. If, discussing his fear the client created the image of shaking jelly, it easy to understand that this image is a symbol of just his fear. Then the question arises: who is frightening him? That image becomes more important. For instance, it may be the image of a gorilla and the gorilla is beating a child. Then you have to establish who of the parents [or other people] beat the client in his childhood. The doctor gets back to discussing the client’s childhood and looks for ways to remove the held-up emotions.
9. Analytical “mosaic”. The doctor always keeps in his mind three realities: image reality, the reality of those feelings and relationships, that are partly expressed in images, and real events in the client’s past that gave rise to sustained pathogenic feelings.
He asks the client to work with images, but understands that the real task is to change feelings, convictions, conflicts and so on, which exist in the inner world of the client. He watches psychosomatic manifestations of the client and compares all this with the client’s personal history and his demand. So image analysis is a complicated intellectual work, carried out here and now, so to speak, “on-line”. The analysis is conducted according to the psychological hypothesis of the doctor.
10. Dialogue a la Socrates. When the doctor understood [or not quite understood] the essence of the main inner conflict of the client, he asks questions the aim of which is to lead the client to the exact understanding of the source of his problems. For this purpose, the method of the dialogue a la Socrates is used. As is known, Socrates could put questions to even an illiterate person in such a way that he was bound to come to the right conclusion and discovered a great truth. No doubt, Socrates knew this truth before but he helped it to appear in the mind of his opponent. In actual fact these questions presuppose a forced, evident answer. A chain of such questions leads to insight! That is why we say that truth is born in argument [but it’s more correct to say in dialogue]! Applying Socratic method the doctor may lead the client to self-knowledge and self-change, naturally if the client accepts this process.