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?
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.
Example 8. Depression from love
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 wouldnt 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, dont 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 clients 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 clients 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 clients 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 its 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 shouldnt 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 clients feelings and his psychosomatic reactions in the course of the impact. If the dynamics of the changes are positive, he offers to repeat the impact several times, until the full positive change of the image and the state is achieved. If the result is negative the doctor interprets it too, then this impact can be canceled and a new impact of a completely opposite meaning may be applied. But the reasons of the initial failure are analyzed and sometimes it turns out that in spite of the explanations and clear instruction, the client did everything in the opposite way. For example, the doctor asked him to accept the Inner Child but the client rejected it again. The reasons of such actions are again analyzed together with the client.
The interpretations are often given later when the correction is successfully completed. Though, when the individual work lasts long and consists of a number of séances, numerous interpretations and explanations are given, many impacts are made which let remove layers of psychological defenses and delusions one after another.
Different technics, which will be described below, may be used to correct the problem revealed. A special chapter will be devoted to these technics. They are used not automatically but according to the meaning of the problem. The methods of correction themselves are essentially emotional impacts, not just technical changes of images.
12. Working with resistance. A client is often resistant to realizing something about himself and changing it, even though he says he seeks self-knowledge and recovery. We have said already that in keeping with the principles used in psychoanalysis, we analyze the resistance itself. Usually we ask the client to create the image of what prevents him from understanding and changing himself. Then this image it studied as all others.
For example, a woman participating in the work of a therapeutic group, who usually answered my questions promptly and without thinking, suddenly started to brake. The reasons of that were not clear and I asked her to present an image of her braking. For some reason, it was the image of a three-year-old girl. Then I asked her to sit down on the chair where the image of the girl was projected and identify with it. When she did so her braking became even stronger, she stopped answering my questions altogether: why? what for? I guessed and asked: Who are you braking for? She answered at once: For my grandmother! Then I found out that at the age of three the girl was brought up by her authoritarian grandmother and resisted her by passive stubbornness. It turned out that her resistance to me as a doctor was the transfer of her resistance to her grandmother! In psychoanalysis, it is considered that the realization of the fact is sufficient for removing the resistance, but in actual fact it is not true, because the initial conflict is not resolved. Because of that we went another way, we offered this woman to tell her grandmother on behalf of the girl that she is clever enough and doesnt want her grandmothers lectures and pressure. After some repetitions the girl [and the client in the same person] felt full liberation from the grandmothers influence and the braking stopped.