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.
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.
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