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This collection of eight summaries of research on different phenomena, associated with mental images, illuminates a number of issues of concern to psychoanalysts.
The mental images one reports to a listener, when reconstructing prior events, were found by one researcher to be vastly different from those meant only for oneself, in which, “the ‘verbal garbage’ spewed forth … is clearly unfit for human consumption. It has no pattern, no themes, no schemata, no hierarchies, no logical arrangements.” This, it is felt, casts doubt upon the methods of collecting data that research studies generally have relied upon. For a research psychologist, this may be bad news; for the psychoanalyst, however, this chaotic remembering may be the familiar babble which is music to the “third ear.”
There appears to be a relationship, albeit unclear, between hypnotizability and the ability to conjure up vivid images, according to other researchers. These researchers discuss the distinction between vivid, active, reality-oriented imagery and spontaneous, passive, fantasy-oriented imagery. Are these, as some have suggested, selective manifestations of left and right brain activity? The authors offer no conclusions, but they do describe research which showed that “highly hypnotizable creative writers reported that the creative flow of ideas appeared to be enhanced during