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Albert Schwietzer (reported in Cousins, 1979) was asked how he could account for the fact that anyone could believe they will get better after treatment with a witch doctor. He responded by saying,
The witch doctor succeeds for the same reason that all of us (doctors) succeed. Each patient carries his own doctor inside of him. They come to us not knowing that truth. We are at our best when we give the doctor who resides within each patient a chance to go to work. [Cousins, 1979, pp. 68–69]
Images and imagination appear to rest delicately upon such a foundation. In many ways, each of the articles presented here speaks to a subtle interaction of science and mystery. For while the articles of this issue do take us closer to understanding some of the experiential, theoretical and clinical workings of image-based experience, we are, inevitably, left with more wonder than scientific certainty. Bachelard (1968) spoke to this when he stated,
One can study only what one has first dreamed about. Science is formed rather on a reverie than on an experiment, and it takes a good many experiments to dispel the mists of the dream. [p. 22]
With deep appreciation to each of the authors, we bring this issue to a close.