Mental Imagery in the Organization and Transformation of the Self

Mental images are sensory-perceptual experiences that occur in the absence of environmental stimulation. Usually the term “imagery” refers to visual memories and imaginings, so called “pictures before the mind's eye”—though auditory, tactile, olfactory, and gustatory sensations are also considered to be imagery submodalities. The scientific study of imagery has a long and extensive history in the academic field, especially cognitive and developmental psychology. Psychoanalysis also has a long history of exploring dreams and visual symbols, but investigations of imagery as a range of sensory-perceptual experiences within the therapeutic hour are relatively new and mostly draw on concepts directly or indirectly derived from the economic and structural models (see Horowitz, 1983; Singer, 1974; Suler, 1988). The revisions of traditional psychoanalytic theory that emphasize the vicissitudes of the self rather than drives — including object-relations theory, self psychology, and psychoanalytic phenomenology — often imply the importance of imagery as a basic feature of psychological functioning by the frequent but usually unclarified use of such terms as “parental imago,” “body image,” and “self and object images.”

The underlying assumption seems to be that imagery plays a fundamental role as a representational system for organizing subjective experience and building self structure. Drawing on concepts from self psychology and psychoanalytic phenomenology (Atwood & Stolorow, 1984; Stolorow, Brandchaft, & Atwood, 1987; Kohut, 1977, 1984), this paper will explore the function of mental imagery in the development, maintenance, and transformation of the self—