Image as Medicine: Imagination and Affect Self-Regulation

Abstract

The purpose of this alchemical hermeneutics study is to explore how working with personal and archetypal images impacts the ability to self-regulate. The more notable texts analyzed are from the works of Carl Jung and his descendants, Allan Schore, and Marion Woodman. Other texts analyzed include dream images, active imagination images, and images manifested from authentic movement that originated from past clients’ psychotherapy sessions and my own personal psychic work. Although behavioral neuroscience highlights the importance of non-linguistic forms of experience as vital in developing an affective window of tolerance, there is little research that highlights the importance of the collective unconscious and its relationship to affective capacities. Through a somatic, depth psychological perspective, this study explores how archetypal imagery (presented as bodily symptom) appears in the therapy room and how this impacts a client’s current affective state. With an appropriate approved ethics application, past clients’ case studies will amplify the theoretical material presented. A discussion of therapeutically engaging with images is described through several psychological topics, including authentic movement, dreams, and active imagination. This study found that when therapeutic interventions engage the collective unconscious through somatic imagery, current affective states are influenced in three specific ways: self-regulation, trust, and attachment.