Guided Affective Imagery with Children and Adolescents PDF
Preview Guided Affective Imagery with Children and Adolescents
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
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