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.
11. Impacts and interpretations. At the moment when the doctor is sure that he understood the real cause giving rise to suffering, and the image of this cause is clearly manifested here and now, he can give his explanation [interpretation] of the problem. After that he offers the client to use one or another means of impacting [see below] the image of the cause to adequately resolve the initial dynamic conflict.
At this point the pace of the work and current feelings are very important, if you lose the moment the vital feelings will go away, the image will lose touch with emotions and the impact on it will be useless. For that reason, sometimes you shouldn’t spend time on interpretations. But it is quite necessary that the client agree to some actions with the image and take these actions himself in his inner world, informing about the results. The doctor assesses these results as confirming his hypothesis or disproving it. The work with the image goes on in the real- time, the doctor follows the dynamics of the client’s feelings and his psychosomatic reactions in the course of the impact. If the dynamics of the changes are positive, he offers to repeat the impact several times, until the full positive change of the image and the state is achieved. If the result is negative the doctor interprets it too, then this impact can be canceled and a new impact of a completely opposite meaning may be applied. But the reasons of the initial failure are analyzed and sometimes it turns out that in spite of the explanations and clear instruction, the client did everything in the opposite way. For example, the doctor asked him to accept the Inner Child but the client rejected it again. The reasons of such actions are again analyzed together with the client.
The interpretations are often given later when the correction is successfully completed. Though, when the individual work lasts long and consists of a number of séances, numerous interpretations and explanations are given, many impacts are made which let remove layers of psychological defenses and delusions one after another.
Different technics, which will be described below, may be used to correct the problem revealed. A special chapter will be devoted to these technics. They are used not automatically but according to the meaning of the problem. The methods of correction themselves are essentially emotional impacts, not just “technical” changes of images.
12. Working with resistance. A client is often resistant to realizing something about himself and changing it, even though he says he seeks self-knowledge and recovery. We have said already that in keeping with the principles used in psychoanalysis, we analyze the resistance itself. Usually we ask the client to create the image of what prevents him from understanding and changing himself. Then this image it studied as all others.
For example, a woman participating in the work of a therapeutic group, who usually answered my questions promptly and without thinking, suddenly started “to brake”. The reasons of that were not clear and I asked her to present an image of her “braking”. For some reason, it was the image of a three-year-old girl. Then I asked her to sit down on the chair where the image of the girl was projected and identify with it. When she did so her “braking” became even stronger, she stopped answering my questions altogether: why? what for? I guessed and asked: “Who are you braking for?” She answered at once: “For my grandmother!” Then I found out that at the age of three the girl was brought up by her authoritarian grandmother and resisted her by passive stubbornness. It turned out that her resistance to me as a doctor was the transfer of her resistance to her grandmother! In psychoanalysis, it is considered that the realization of the fact is sufficient for removing the resistance, but in actual fact it is not true, because the initial conflict is not resolved. Because of that we went another way, we offered this woman to tell her grandmother on behalf of the girl that she is clever enough and doesn’t want her grandmother’s lectures and pressure. After some repetitions the girl [and the client in the same person] felt full liberation from the grandmother’s influence and “the braking” stopped.
My student Irina Tabolina offered her original method of working with resistance. When the client, having identified himself with the image, doesn’t answer questions, doesn’t see the image and doesn’t feel anything, she asks him to stand up from the chair, move behind the back of the chair and tell who he is and who doesn’t let the client speak. If the client is still silent, he is asked to make another step back and stand behind the back of the previous imagined character. He is asked once again who he is and why he doesn’t let the client speak. This process sometimes continues as far as seven steps back. But sooner or later after one more step the client begins to speak, and then it becomes clear which parts of his personality or images of other people stopped him from moving forward. After that the resistance stops.
Other methods of work with resistance are also possible, for instance those which are traditional in psychoanalysis and in other therapeutic modalities. For example, you can praise the client for fortitude and resourcefulness that he displayed showing his resistance. You can say that he is awarded the honorary medal “Hero of Resistance”. You can conclude an additional agreement with him: “I will gain success in therapy even if my mother [my father] and my doctor don’t like it”. After that the resistance diminishes or completely disappears.
2. Creating the hypothesis
We have already said that the whole study of images is conducted proceeding from a hypothesis, that in some way emerges in the mind of the doctor. It is necessary to pay special attention to this process as everything depends on it. How does a hypothesis appear? This is a creative process and it can’t be fully discovered. But we can explain what a hypothesis is and define some important prerequisites for it to emerge as well as the procedures of its verification.
A hypothesis is a well-grounded supposition of the consultant about mechanisms and the psychological reason, that gives rise to the client’s problem. In the course of the work the hypothesis turns into a sure knowledge.
In literature, there is practically no information about how a therapeutic hypothesis is created. It is connected with the fact that, as it was said before, it is nearly impossible to describe the creative process that leads the doctor to his guesses. Besides a hypothesis is created on the basis of this or another theory, that’s why hypotheses may be different and the process of creating them differs in different schools. However, we will try to fill this gap as much as possible, despite differences in schools.
A well-formed hypothesis contains the answers to the following questions:
– What unrealized [frustrated] desire [or attraction] of the client gives rise to the problem under study?
– What is the nature of the barrier that doesn’t