Sometimes it helps if you tell such an English anecdote and it is to the point:
A drunk man is looking for something in the park under a street lamp. A policeman comes up to him.
Sir, what are you looking for here?
Well, Ive lost my keys over there, in the park, I cant get into my house!
But sir, why are you looking for them here if you lost them there?
But it is dark there!
You can say that the EIT method gives to the patient a hand flashlight so that he could look for something where it is dark.
2. Any other clients who are suspicious about psychotherapy. They are afraid to trust the doctor, want to expose his incompetence, to contradict him. They perceive therapy like struggle. They realize that creating an image they reveal themselves and it is just this that they are afraid of. You have to spend some time to win his trust and create the atmosphere of cooperation.
3. Clients who create images but dont associate emotions with them. They discuss and dream up but they dont feel. They work but as if from the outside towards themselves, which means that nothing happens to their feelings. You must switch over to discussing the reasons why they avoid having real feelings.
In every case when images are difficult for the client to create it is the sigh of some worry [the ways to facilitate creating images are discussed below], or some defense mechanisms. So as psychoanalysts realized before, if you face a defense or resistance you should focus on this defense or resistance. This can be discussed verbally but it is better to ask the client to create the image of the defense preventing the creation of images, to find out how it works and for what purpose and so on.
But in the final analysis, if this method doesnt suit somebody it only means that he is deprived of the opportunity to use its advantages. If he wants to get the result he must try and if he wants to find a more suitable method then let him try. The choice is very big today, and every person can find what he likes more, what will prove more effective in solving his problem. We dont claim that we have created a panacea. In medicine in
general a lot of people look for their method and their doctor, even the right diagnosing may be a very complicated task.
The second questioned that is usually asked is where you can find a full list of images and their interpretation. I have already mentioned that there are special reference books on this matter, there is a brief dictionary of images in this book too, but it is not enough. The question should be asked in a different way: how to analyze images? In our method there are no mechanical ways of analysis, the work is always creative, but there are main principles and methods of image analysis.
The following methods may help:
1. The study of sensory qualities of an image. At first the doctor asks the client to describe the image in detail. If it is a tree then what kind of tree it is, trees may be different If it is a stone then what its form is, its color, its weight. If it is a dwarf then how tall it is, how it is dressed, how his face looks. For example: You said it was a stain. What kind of stain? Stains can be different. Is it big? What about its form, color, consistence?
In determining the character of an image its color is very important. According to the color definitely positive colors are shining, silver, gray, sparkling, transparent, blue, light-blue, golden, rainbow, white, pink and so on. But color alone doesnt reveal the meaning. Sparkling colors definitely have the emotional tone of joy. All nature images are positive: trees, grass, soil, flowers and so on. Intuitively all people think that black colors are by all means bad. This is not true. Black soil, for instance, is quite a positive image. But other black images may simply hide their real meaning. For example, a black imp is the image of a mischievous, naughty child. But doesnt mean he is bad. Bad colors have the tone of poison, they are rotten, annoying, oppressive and so on. The same is true of disharmonious, sounds. So are all stinking smells, like that of burning rubber. Kinesthetic feelings pressing, causing pain, prickly, tearing feelings, that of something alien. The feeling of emptiness, of being drained, of lacking something.
The main thing is the emotional meaning 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 didnt 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 hasnt 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 doesnt 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 arent 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 clients 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?