Working With Mental Imagery in Clinical Psychology
Hales SA., Young K., Iyadurai L., Blackwell SE., Kanstrup M., Holmes EA.
Mental imagery has become a “hot topic” in psychology and cognitive neuroscience over the past decade. Mental images are sensory events that happen inside one's mind without a corresponding current stimulus coming from the outside world. We can “see with the mind's eye”, “hear with the mind's ear” and so on. In this article we first describe the impact and role of mental imagery for people experiencing a range of psychological difficulties. We then describe a variety of imagery-based psychological therapy techniques to treat distressing or dysfunctional imagery, and/or promote positive imagery. Finally, we discuss components of effective supervision of imagery-based interventions.