Appreciation of the potential of the right cerebral hemisphere. Imagery in psychotherapy

Abstract

The starting point of this work is the verification of two facts: a) the emergence in the second half of the twentieth century of psychotherapy models that work mainly or exclusively with guided imagery which stimulate the spontaneity of images, plus other models which use procedures with images as a relevant resource; and b) the verification of the fact that after the associative phase which paid scientific priority to the topic of images (approximately from 1890 to 1920), followed by the behavioural phase in which images were practically banished from scientific research (especially between 1920 and 1950), after the second half of the XX century two collectives contribute to a spectacular and gradual increase in the scientific interest in image activity: the “cognitive paradigm” and the New Structuralism of Akhter Ashen which we could call “image paradigm”. Based on these facts, three questions are posed and addressed: 1) What role has image activity played within the history of medicine? 2) How can we explain the lack of interest in images in therapeutic activities starting in the XVII century? 3) Which conclusions form basic research preformed after 1960 can grant scientific support to the findings in terms of therapeutic power of images from the clinical experience of varied models? Finally, a summary of experimental research on the therapeutic efficacy of a psychotherapy technique with fantasy from Assaglioli´s Psychosynthesis is presented.