Promoting recall in rational psychotherapy through imagery techniques

Research on imagery process has shown that mental images serve to organize, store, and retrieve meaningful information. Since learning is a central activity in psychotherapy, it was theorized that use of imagery in the therapeutic dialogue would enhance the storage and retrieval of meaningful ideas, concepts, and information relevant to personal change.This study tested the hypotheses that (a) imagery interventions influence the amount and type of information clients recall from the psychotherapeutic process and that (b) recall influences therapeutic outcome. Rational Emotive Therapy (RET) was selected for the study because of its emphasis on cognitive learning variables. Two imagery interventions were devised for use with RET: Imagery Instruction and Counselor Reflective Imagery. Four therapists employed RET alone or in combination with the imagery interventions to administer four different treatment conditions to eight different clients for eight weekly therapy sessions. The 32 treatment subjects were clients at three university counseling centers. Pre- and post-measures were obtained on mental imagery ability, irrational beliefs, problem severity, and attitudes. Recall protocols were administered on a session-by-session basis and at the conclusion of treatment.Analysis of results showed enhancing effects on recall for the different imagery conditions. Interactions indicated that therapist factors could influence the magnitude of effect of treatment. Regression analyses revealed negative relationships between recall and therapeutic gain.The Imagery Instruction technique proved superior to both the Counselor Reflective Image and a combination of the two imagery techniques in promoting recall. That higher recall was associated with greater emotional disturbance, and lower recall with therapeutic improvement suggested that as clients improved in therapy, there was less cognitive focus on problems and concomitantly less recall of themes and details related to problems. Implications concerning stages of therapy were evident in these findings, suggesting that promoting recall is more important during the early, exploratory phase of therapy, and less important during the later, problem-solving phase.U of I OnlyETDs are only available to UIUC Users without author permissio