Alpha rhythm during three conditions of visual imagery and emergent uncovering psychotherapy: The critical role of anxiety.

Abstract

Two groups of student subjects and one group of client subjects were monitored by electroencephalogram, electrooculogram, galvanic skin response, and finger pulse response during free imagery, free imagery recall, dream recall, and emergent uncovering psychotherapy. The results showed that visual imagery per se did not desynchronize occipital alpha; however, dream revisualization and images accompanied by an electrophysiological pattern of anxiety ("hot" images) were associated with alpha desynchronization. The effort of revisualization also was found to be an influencing variable, but it was not as desynehronizing as was dream recall. The client subjects showed more direct representation of drives in their visual imagery than the student subjects, and several of them experienced the uncovering of repressed material. Five of the client subjects and three of the student subjects manifested symptoms during at least one of the conditions. The failure of percent alpha to decrease during the appearance of symptoms and subjective distress was inconsistent with the so-called alpha state.

Concepts, Results, and Applications

“…The work of Merrill Anderson (note 1) suggests that increased attention to detail in an image creates increased vividness. To the extent that such vividness bears a linear relationship to conscious awareness (e.g., Reyher, 1977, Reyher & Morishige, 1969Morishige & Reyher, 1975), its assessment could also be useful in determining progress in therapies designed to broaden conscious awareness of unconscious experience.…”

Physiological Measures and Feedback during Psychotherapy

“…Toomin and Toomin [1975] noted that con scious or preconscious anxiety was associated with an increase in skin con ductance while a drop or flattening of skin conductance was indicative of resistance and repression. Morishige and Reyher [1975] reported that anxi ety during dream revisualization was connected with alpha desynchroniza tion while visual imagery per se did not desynchronize occipital alpha. The general consensus of these studies appears to be that affective arousal during psychotherapy (particularly unpleasant affects) is clearly associated with autonomic and voluntary nervous system activation; however, affective tranquility, whether it is an expression of a genuine state of security or a manifestation of psychological resistance and detachment, seems to be cor related with autonomic and voluntary nervous system quiescence.…”

Experiences of engaging in Archetypal Dreamwork

“…Newness-"the sense of discovering something that was not previously known" (p.449) you put out there, they don't bother you, so when I started to see what my actions out in the world were actually doing (through the dreams), it was very, very difficult" "it was like 35 years of shit was gone, in that one dream" "I feel like I'm actually meeting my truth about sex" 71 What is interesting in the literature is the hypothesis that certain insights appear to be unique to the dream state: revisualization of dreams brings about a physiologic response which indicates emotional activation in the brain, whereas this response does not occur during a free imagery exercise (Pesant & Zadra, 2004;Reyher & Morishige, 1969;Morishige & Reyher, 1975). In essence, insights gathered from dream work may spring from emotion processing (by revisualization of the dream), not intellectual understanding.…”

“…The role of emotion in dreams is demonstrated by electroencephalogram studies which have found that revisualization of one's dreams brings about a physiologic response indicative of emotional activation in the brain; whereas, the same physiological response did not occur during a free imagery exercise (Reyher and Morishige, 1969;Morishige and Reyher, 1975). Pesant and Zadra (2004) hypothesize that this emotional/physiological response enables insights to occur, and that this" ... is consistent with the idea that insights do not merely arise from an intellectual understanding of dreams" (p. 498).…”