The images in our fantasies are related to the images experienced in our nightly dreams. They are quite expressive of our conflicts, anxieties and problems, but also of our desires. Dream pictures, dream symbols as well as fantasy pictures must frequently be interpreted in order to understand their meaning. Conscious experience is closer to our imagination than it is to our dreams. Therefore we can work with our imagination consciously and this can be used in psychotherapy.

When does working with imagination as a psychotherapeutic method help? A therapy can use imagination to solve current problems such as problems in a relationship. For example, one could picture an approaching conflict with a supervisor and therefore visualise this scene. The client could imagine different solutions and could practice imagining and realising the best solution. (Imagining action). In therapeutic terminology these inner pictures are called visualisations that are controlled by our conscious egos.

There are other types of inner pictures – imagination that comes from the depths of our unconscious and which the ego has less control over. According to views in depth psychology represented by Carl G. Jung and Prof. Dr. Verena Kast, this imagination stems from the energy centres of our deeper emotions, unresolved conflicts, complexes and unprocessed wounds from our pasts. A therapist can help the client use imagination to deal with and process his/her repressed negative forces. When these negative forces can be visualised, it helps in dealing with them and they can be changed or even eliminated. These negative forces can come from internalised voices and images from our past. These can include those from our parents and others of influence who have caused us damage in childhood. Let’s imagine a young man who has low self-esteem and is suffering from constant self-deprecation. He doesn’t yet know that his problems stem from the fact that he was an unwanted child. He has repressed that his mother often put him down, scolded him and blamed him for her unsuccessful life. Imagination can help show him where his bad moods come from. It can lead him to these repressed scenes from his past. Now the young man has the chance to be confronted by his destructive inner mother relationship. He can meet his neglected inner child. He can also get to know new, self-healing inner pictures and powers. Point three below describes a further example of how a therapeutically accompanied imagination can have healing effects for people with low self-acceptance and esteem.

From the point of view of logotherapy, there is a deeper layer beyond that of the unconscious layer of unresolved conflicts. It is the space for the spiritual unconscious, the place of self-healing powers, liberation, hope, love and spirituality. Imaginings can serve as inner wanderings to a person’s deepest layer (the mental depth of person according to Viktor E. Frankl) and lead to a chain of healing, comforting, and hope-generating pictures (examples further below). Visions for the future can also emerge from this deep layer that give our lives new meaning and drive. Dr. Uwe Böschemeyer (Germany) researched this type of imagination which stems from a deep psychic layer and called it "value-oriented imagination".

2. Practical experience and methods for imagination work

Imagination exercises can be practised individually or in a small group. In the beginning, these should always be led by professionals schooled in psychotherapy. Later on, they can also be done on one’s own with the help of a CD for example.

a.) Exercises with imagination should always start with a small relaxation phase. In the beginning, clients often sense their unsettling thoughts. At first they have to let go of daily stress for example by means of a breathing exercise: therapist: “Close your eyes! Feel the breath flow through you! Now take five deep breaths. Now let your breath proceed freely so that it flows all by itself...”

So-called focusing exercises also help in this phase of relaxation. Likewise, calm and slow music can also have a relaxing effect. 

b.) In the second phase, the therapist can help the client by naming introductory, focusing symbols that help one to begin the expedition to explore one’s inner world. It is key to reducing outer distractions in order to be able to concentrate on the flow of inner pictures. These symbols trigger associations and images that stem from our personal inner world. Important introductory symbols include: the motive “house” – the therapist’s prompts: “Imagine the house you grew up in...wander around this house...Do you meet someone?...etc.” The house is stimulation and, as such, provides a concentrated appeal. It is a symbol for the room of our personalities. It can lead to further associations and images that can again bring us to deeper problems and desires.

Theme “water” – the therapist’s prompts:: “Imagine the water....If the water moves, follow its movements. ...How does the surrounding area look? Is the water calm or active? ...etc...” Images of water express if we are vitally alive or if something is blocked inside of us. In therapy, a depressed man imagined a river. The river was very cold. At one spot a mountain blocked the passage of the river. The river was trapped in a gorge and had to flow backwards. This man was at the beginning of his therapy and now felt the constriction and blockages in his own personality. His own life was how he imagined the river – cold and hemmed in. His life development had serious obstacles like the mountain in his imagination. His depression had been sparked by an early retirement. (According to Prof. Dr. V. Kast)

Further prompting symbols can include: a well – an entrance to a cave – a staircase leading down deep into the inner world...

Dreams and dream fragments as basic symbols – A woman dreamed of a cat, that sat on her grandmother’s stove. The cat stared at her and frightened her. Then she woke up. In order to understand the deeper meaning of the nightmare, the woman allowed her therapist to conduct a so-called “imagination” session with her. In her imagination, she saw a room that reminded her of her childhood. It was her grandmother’s old kitchen. In her imagination she met the large, threatening cat once again. The client saw herself as a five-year-old child and she was impressed by the cat’s wild eyes. The therapist asked her; what would this cat say if it could talk to you? The client said: “This place on the stove-top belongs to me!” After completing a longer imagination chain, a therapeutic discussion followed: the client’s sister was the kitten in the family in former times. She could be loveable and affectionate. However, both sisters were competing for the grandmother’s affection and therefore the loving kitten turned into a hissing, scratching, aggressive cat. This terrifying “cat-sister” of childhood followed my client into her dreams.  - Imagination can help to make dreams more understandable, to recall memories to the present and to find out the meaning of dreams. Unresolved conflicts from childhood can be recognised and processed.

c.) An imagined sequence can last up to 40 minutes. During this time, a whole row of inner pictures can be viewed. The person imagining (client) tells the therapist, what he/she sees. Different sensory organs such as sense of smell, sense of hearing and feelings can be activated, even if the inner pictures are most important. It’s also possible that the person imagining is fascinated by a wonderful inner music. The therapist accompanies the person imagining and supports him/her through the fantasy trip. If, for example, the person imagining arrives at a dead end and gets hung up on one particular inner picture, the therapist tries to help bring everything into motion again. The therapist watches out for scary inner pictures and tries not to let the client get terribly emotionally burdened by these pictures.

d.) After having completed a fantasy trip, it’s time for a therapeutic discussion. The meaning of the pictured fantasy has to be established and worked on. The question is asked as to how the meaning of the scenes imagined relate to the client’s life.

3. Highly structured therapeutic fantasy trips

Therapists work differently with imagination within the framework of therapy. They differ especially with regard to the degree with which they try to steer, structure and influence the imaginings of their clients. At this point, more tightly controlled and pre-structured imaginings are being presented. This is different from the less structured work with imagination that allows the client’s unconscious a lot of freedom. Value-oriented imaginings belong to this last type of fantasy trip according to Dr. Uwe Böschemeyer.

The doctor and psychoanalyst Prof. Dr. Luise Reddemann (Germany) showed in her book “Imagination as a healing power” which therapeutic possibilities there are when dealing with tightly controlled and pre-structured imaginings. She applies this type of imagination in her therapy to treat traumatised patients. (These suffer – in the language of the field – from “post-traumatic stress disorder”, PTSD). In her dream therapies she also treats victims of sexual violence, especially women. Her imagination treatment is a therapeutic element within a comprehensive clinical psychotherapy practice. These exercises can also be practised outside of clinical therapy with less dramatic problems.

People with too little self-confidence could also profit, for example, from the following imagination exercise developed by Luise Reddemann:

Excerpt of a fantasy trip exercise:

Imagine a light in your heart that warms and makes light grow...and let this light in every corner of your heart so that your whole heart gets light and warm...And then imagine, that the warmth and brightness from your heart spreads throughout your breast and from there spreads further to the rest of your body so that your whole body is filled with the warmth and light of your heart...and now let the light from your heart go through the soles of your feet so that slowly a circle of light builds surrounding you. ...And now you invite the person that you were ten years ago into this circle of light and give her the warmth and light from your heart so that this earlier ego becomes light and warm...and then invite the small child that you were between one and four years old to be in the circle of light....And give her the warmth and light from your heart...(a further part of this fantasy trip is left out here)...The conclusion of this guide to imagining says: ...And then empower yourself: I am full of warmth and sympathy for myself and I trust that I will always have this ability when I need it.

Imaginations also help to make understandable, cognitive insights more felt. Example: A client suffers from low self acceptance and esteem. In his “head”, in his thoughts he knows that he is as valuable as other people. His feeling can not turn this recognition into belief. How can he achieve a feeling deep in his heart that he is a valuable person? The work with imaginings can be helpful in this case in order to allow him to come into contact with his inner world and with inner pictures that will enable him to feel his self acceptance.

In the framework of psychotherapy – especially dream therapy – one can confront painful, burdensome experiences. According to Luise Reddemann, the work with imagination at the beginning of a therapy, can help to prepare the clients emotionally so that an emotional and inner stability is reached before such painful confrontations are made. To this end, exercises for the inner secure place and for the inner helper are especially helpful.

To the inner secure place (excerpt from an imagination exercise):

Let thoughts, images or pictures appear of a place in which you feel especially well and protected. Give this place a border of your choice, that is made in such a way, that only you can determine what living creatures in this place, in your place, should be there, are allowed to be there. You can naturally invite creatures that you would like to have there. If possible, I’d advise you not to invite people, but perhaps loving company and helpers, creatures, that give you support and love. Test whether you feel well there with all your senses. First test if that which you perceive with your eyes is agreeable to your eyes. If there is something that you don’t like, then change it...is the temperature pleasant? ...Are the smells that you perceive pleasant?

Even outside of a clinic and psychotherapy such exercises - which were only presented here in excerpts and incompletely – can be useful in diminishing stress and for producing a psycho-physical balance. It goes without saying that these types of exercises are used in many health courses.

Learn more about:

4. Active imagination according to Carl G. Jung and Verena Kast

5. Value-oriented imagination according to U. Böschemeyer

© Dipl.-Päd. Jürgen Bendszus 2010

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Titel of the original German text:

Imaginationen in der Psychotherapie – Heilender Umgang mit inneren Bildern