Commentary. The séance took 15—20 minutes, we solved the problem that was a most important problem for all the further life of Kate. A year later Kate gave birth to her first baby and came to her classes with a pram.
3. Verification of a hypothesis
The verification turns the hypothesis into a certainty. When the hypothesis is fully formed, it may be explained [but you shouldn’t do it every time] to the client. The confirmation of the hypothesis by the client is an important proof that it is correct. But the doctor can find some confirming arguments by other means too. It may be particularly important when your hypothesis may antagonize the client or elicit his strong resistance, in this case you shouldn’t share it with him
The doctor can “calculate” the consequences of the problem in different areas of the client’s life and make sure that he is right by asking questions. For example, if you suspect that the client suffers from some obtrusiveness, you can ask him if he does some senseless rituals to protect himself from some accident of if he suppresses his sexual thoughts. The client may confirm he is surprised by you being so shrewd.
Example. One day a woman called me about her teenage daughter’s hysterical behavior. Still on the telephone I told her: “But you don’t love your daughter because she is like her father whom you divorced”. She was shocked by my shrewdness, as she didn’t tell me anything about her former husband, and about his likeness with the daughter. I diagnosed this psychological case by some little indications: the way she spoke about her daughter, as she didn’t mention her father, by the style of the hysterical behavior of her daughter.
As we have already said when working with images the verification of the meaning of images and the confirmation of the hypothesis may be a kind of mental experiment, when a client influences the image in some way, and the result of this impact which you control, is the answer to the question whether the hypothesis is correct or not.
The criterion of the rightness of the hypothesis is the successful solution of the problem on the background of this hypothesis. This is its final confirmation. Though in case the solution was not achieved, it’s wrong to make a conclusion that the hypothesis was wrong. The correct psychological diagnosis paves the way to success but doesn’t guarantee it.
Summary
1. Different trends in psychotherapy work with images.
2. Most interesting are dreams, pictures and fantasies which involuntarily reflect the personality and its problems.
3. The images created by the client are interpreted on the background of the experience of many generations of psychologists, images speak about the things which the client doesn’t notice in himself.
4. To deeper understand the meaning of images the doctor makes a special research analyzing images together with the client.
5. While analyzing images the doctor is guided by a hypothesis, which takes into account symptoms, the client’s life history and special features of images.
6. In the EIT the client is requested to ask the image about something as it was a living thing, to assume its role and on its behalf to answer questions of the doctor.
7. You may often use not one but many images which become revealed during the analysis.
8. When the meaning of the image is clear and it reflects the emotional state most important for this problem, the doctor asks the client to influence the image in some way and it is the means of solving the problem.
9. If the influence is effective it is repeated till the clear therapeutic result [100%] is achieved.
10. Images and symptoms are the basis for creating a therapeutic hypothesis. The hypothesis makes it possible to analyze the problem more exactly and adequately.
11. The hypothesis is created on the basis of different theories and private therapeutic models as well as the doctor’s experience.
12. A well-formed hypothesis contains answers to the main questions:
– What unrealized [frustrated] desire [or attraction] of the client generates the analyzed problem?
– What is the nature of the barrier not allowing the client to realize the desire?
– What conditions or events of the past promoted the conflict?
13. On the basis of some theory the hypothesis unites symptoms, feelings, images, the supposed psychodynamic conflict, past events, chronic negative state, generating symptoms. It is verified by additional questions and watching non-verbal behavior of the client.
Chapter 5. Main stages of the process of the therapy through emotions and images
In general, the EIT method may be described in the formula: a negative feeling – an image of the feeling – the analysis – an emotional transformation of the image – a positive feeling. But this description is not sufficient. In a more precise way the therapeutic process in the EIT method may presented as succession consisting of ten steps.
The first five steps [or stages] may be defined as an analytical phase of the work, when the main psychological conflict becomes revealed. The following five phases are devoted to the transformation of the emotional state, which generates the existing problem, verifying and fixing the result achieved.
At times, certain transformational actions with an image may be just a stage in the analytical work. Or with the help of these actions some intermediate results are achieved, and they are steps to achieve the final liberation. A chain of images connected with the problem may be made and a whole series of actions may be performed. Everything depends on the “entanglement” of the problem and the sincerity of the client. But the final solution is always simple in meaning and in implementation, it always stops pathogenic fixation and at the same time constant production of pathogenic emotions. Only emotional in their content actions with images can lead to effective transformation of the image and solution of the initial problem. The goes on in real time that is here and now.
The EIT may be conducted both individually and in a group. What is typical of group work is that therapeutic work is conducted with one member of the group, on his request but in the presence of the group. Watching the therapeutic séance other members of the group often resolve their own problems by analogy with the case discussed. They learn to understand other people and themselves better. The EIT has the advantage of being visual, the whole structure of the client’s psychological problem becomes absolutely evident for the observers due to its image expression. This is a good way of teaching students and practicing psychologists.
1. General scheme of therapeutic work [10 steps]
1. Preliminary conversation
As in all therapy trends before you start changing the state of the client you get to know him, clear up the problem, gather information about his life history, conclude the contract. All these therapeutic work principles are well described on literature so will not specially dwell on them here. The result of the initial talk in the EIT must be clear identification of the important feeling or state which the client feels as undesirable, causing suffering and being the “center” of the problem discussed. You also discover the problem situation [critical situation] in which this symptom appears. In the course of further work you may come back to the initial conversation, if some circumstances of the client’s life or his intentions are not quite clear.
Even at this stage some hypothesis of the client’s problem structure must appear, the hypothesis about the main impulses requiring realization and about the barriers on its way. In every case the hypothesis must include the idea of the chronic emotional fixation on the basis of which the system of adaptations and corresponding functional disorders is based [see above].
2. The symptom’s manifestation in an imagined