Guided Affective Imagery with Children and Adolescents

186 Pages·1983·2.87 MB·English

by  Hanscarl Leuner

Guided Affective Imagery with
Children and Adolescents
EMOTIONS, PERSONALITY, AND PSYCHOTHERAPY
Series Editors
Carroll E. Izard, University of Delaware, Newark, Delaware
and
Jerome L. Singer, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut
HUMAN EMOTIONS
Carroll E. Izard
THE PERSONAL EXPERIENCE OF TIME
Bernard S. Gorman and Alden E. Wessman
THE STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS: Scientific Investigation into the
Flow of Human Experience
Kenneth S. Pope and Jerome L. Singer, eds.
THE POWER OF HUMAN IMAGINATION: New Methods
in Psychotherapy
Jerome L. Singer and Kenneth S. Pope, eds.
EMOTIONS IN PERSONALITY AND PSYCHOPATHOLOGY
Carroll E. Izard, ed.
FREUD AND MODERN PSYCHOLOGY, Volume 1: The Emotional
Basis of Mental Illness
Helen Block Lewis
FREUD AND MODERN PSYCHOLOGY, Volume 2: The Emotional
Basis of Human Behavior
Helen Block Lewis
GUIDED AFFECTIVE IMAGERY WITH CHILDREN AND ADOLESCENTS
Hanscarl Leuner, Gunther Horn, and Edda Klessmann
A Continuation Order Plan is available for this series. A continuation order will bring delivery
of each new volume immediately upon publication. Volumes are billed only upon actual ship
ment. For further information please contact the publisher.
Guided Affective Imagery with
Children and Adolescents
HANS CARL LEUNER
GUNTHER HORN
AND
EDDA KLESSMANN
University of GOItingen
Go/tingen, Federal Republic of Germany
In collaboration with Inge Klemperer, Inge Sommer, and
Hans-Martin Wiichter
Translated by Elizabeth Lachman
Translation edited by William A. Richards
PLENUM PRESS • NEW YORK AND LONDON
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Leuner, Hanscarl.
Guided affective imagery with children and adolescents.
(Emotions, personality, and psychotherapy)
Translation of: Katathymes Bilderleben mit Kindem und jugendlichen.
Bibliography: p.
Includes index.
1. Fantasy-Therapeutic use. 2. Imagery (Psychology)-Therapeutic use. 3. Child psy
chotherapy. 4. Adolescent psychotherapy. I. Horn, GUnther, 1935- . III. Richards,
William A. IV. Title. V. Series. [DNLM: 1. Psychotherapy-In infancy and childhood. 2.
Psychotherapy-In adolescence. 3. Imagination. WS 350.2 L653k]
Rj505.F34L4813 1983 618.92'8916 83-8050
ISBN-13: 978-1-4613-3645-7 e-ISBN-13: 978-1-4613-3643-3
001: 10.1007/978-1-4613-3643-3
This volume is a translation of the second revised edition of Kalalhymes Bilderleben mil Kindem
und Jugendlichen by Hanscarl Leuner, Giinther Horn, and Edda Klessmann, published in 1978
by Ernst Reinhardt Verlag. Munich and BaseL German Edition (ISBN 3-497-00821-4) © 1977
and 1978 by Ernst Reinhardt GmbH & Co., Munich
©1983 Plenum Press, New York
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1s t edition 1983
A Division of Plenum Publishing Corporation
233 Spring Street, New York, N.Y. 10013
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted
in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, microfilming,
recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the Publisher
Foreword
A major shift in our conception of human psychology has occurred in
the past 20 years. Research scientists have recognized that the
stimulus-response models that characterized the dominant "objec
tive behaviorism" of the period between 1910 and 1960 had over
looked the role of conscious thought, cognitive mapping, and related
centrally generated information-processing as fundamental human
characteristics. Indeed, even the psychoanalytic theorizing of that pe
riod placed great emphasis on "drives," "energy displacements,"
and unconscious phenomena. Today, we increasingly recognize that
human beings are curious, information-gathering creatures with a
differential emotional structure that is closely tied to the nature of in
formation processing and to problems of meaning as well as to the
satisfaction of physiological needs. In the basic fields of social psy
chology and personality theory, increasing attention is being paid to
how people form constructs of the confusing ambiguities of daily life
and social relationships and how they mentally play and replay these
in waking or in nocturnal-sleeping fantasy form.
The clinical methods developed by Professor Leuner and his col
leagues exemplify the view that human reality consists not only of the
direct experiences of environmental stimulation or social interaction
but also of the private reality developed as we replay these experi
ences in our day and night dreams and shape them into symbolic,
metaphorical, or allegorical modes. The therapeutic techniques de
scribed here are designed to help individual children and adolescents
confront their external reality more effectively by first leading them to
v
vi FOREWORD
a confrontation with the various ways in which they have already de
veloped symbolic and private forms for dealing with the outside. In
effect, the imagery "trips" become voyages of self-exploration that
also lead ultimately to more direct, overt behavioral change. While we
cannot be sure that we have a firm grasp on how some of the methods
work, the elaboration of the procedures is stimulating not only for cli
nicians but for researchers striving to understand how we form and
use mental representations of the milieu we inhabit.
This volume represents a major step-the first careful description
in English of guided affective imagery (GAl) procedures as applied to
children and adolescents, including a detailed rationale and case re
ports. As such, it presents a real challenge to many clinicians to ex
plore the possibilities of this systematic and thoughtful approach in
the interests of helping disturbed youth. At first, GAl may not seem
to be everyone's cup of tea. It seems to some nebulous or almost mys
tical. And yet, the evidence from recent behavioral therapy research
continues to suggest the importance of using humans' imagery
capacities as part of systematic behavior change. Professor Leuner ex
amines some of those possible links between his method and the be
havior therapies to which I called attention in my book Imagery and
Daydream Methods in Psychotherapy and Behavior Modification (New
York: Academic Press, 1974). His discussion and some of the case
studies presented here lead to the proposition that imagery trips not
only may accomplish what behavioral treatments can do but may go
even further by developing the imaginative skills of the child and
thus leading to greater generalization. Research on and evaluation of
clinical efforts are certainly needed to support these propositions, but
the issues are now being drawn more clearly with the translation of
this intriguing work.
To a generation of children growing up with television and thus
strongly socialized toward a very visual, slickly packaged, and contin
uous storytelling experience, the GAl method may present some dif
ficulties, but also attractions. The European children presented in this
volume had a more extensive exposure to fairy tales, reading, and pa
rental or family narration, I believe. American children may be losing
the habit of reading or of private storytelling because it is so easy to
become absorbed in the fast-paced American television fare. They
may have some initial difficulties "getting into" a treatment such as
FOREWORD vii
GAl, but I believe that once started, they will welcome the recogni
tion of the potential richness of their imaginative capacities. With the
publication of this work, we may soon find out what opportunities
exist for transferring the method, apparently so successful in Europe,
to helping the troubled children of America.
Yale University jerOn1e L. Singer
New Haven, Connecticut
Preface to the Second Edition
The first edition of this volume was out of print surprisingly quickly.
During the past year, no fundamentally new results were gained that
would justify revising or crucially expanding the manuscript. Some
data were changed in the text referring to an increasingly larger num
ber of treated cases of anorexia and to a more extended follow-up ob
servation period in the case of "Ralph." The text was carefully exam
ined.
Gottingen Hanscarl Leuner
Gunther Horn
Edda Klessmann
ix
Preface to the First Edition
Since guided affective imagery first appeared in the literature in 1955,
it has developed into an internationally recognized approach to the
use of mental imagery in psychotherapy. It occupies a unique posi
tion among the imaginal procedures currently available to
psychotherapists. On the one hand, it is distinguished by the possi
bility of systematically structuring the broad imaginal field of experi
ence and, on the other hand, by its wide range of diverse technical
procedures, which are flexible and can be adapted to the individual
case.
The application of guided affective imagery in the treatment of
children and adolescents originated in preliminary research, which
Leuner conducted in the 1950s while working in the field of child psy
chiatry, for some years as director of a child guidance center.
The present book is the first systematic compilation of therapy
with children and adolescents using guided affective imagery. The
particular application for children during latency and for adolescents
is summarized and critically assessed. Broader clinical experience and
case examples illustrate the intense effect of guided affective imagery.
In the course of treatment, the depth-psychological dynamics of the
therapeutic process often unfold in a logically consistent manner. The
gradual resolution of symptoms not infrequently takes place parallel
to these dynamics. The concurrence of the results found by therapists
working independently of one another is surprising: the modest ex
penditure of time with short-term therapies ranging from 4 to 25 ses
sions, and the successes which frequently last, without mere symp-
xi
xii PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION
tom substitution. Even with severely disturbed children and
adolescents presenting considerable personality disturbances, the
length of treatment is generally short, as in such therapy with adults.
These experiences and observations of the release of psychodynamic
processes, which, as a rule, are laden with strong affect, justify, in
our opinion, the designation of intensive psychotherapy. The reader
may form his or her own judgment about this. Further investigations
with more formal research designs are planned.
The number of psychotherapists successfully using guided affec
tive imagery with children and adolescents has recently increased.
This increase has led to the conviction that the procedure has a sub
stantial therapeutic basis by way of the depth-psychological working
through of the basic disturbance and that it produces character
changing effects. Thus, it contrasts with the recently, more frequently
proposed procedures that exclude the patient's intrapsychic experi
ence.
The authors hope the publication of their observations and re
sults will encourage psychotherapists to verify them.
Gottingen Hanscarl Leuner
Gunther Horn
Edda Klessmann