VIENNA 99 – Working on Mental Images and Emotions: An Empirical Support for Milton Erickson’s Approach
Working on Mental Images and Emotions:
An Empirical Support for Milton Erickson’s Approach
Giovanna Genovese
Study Centre and Psychological Consultancy Messina Italy
This study aims to show how Milton Erickson’s Approach
integrated by the Psycho-neural V A-E Model can give empirically tested results.
A coherent psycho-neural model might emerge, not probing
phenomenological reports alone, or essaying the neurological substrate alone,
but examining how both these two processes
covary with one another. (D.D.Price 1996)
The Erickson Approach
The descriptions of Erickson’s sessions are often
nothing more than the telling of one story after the other.
Erickson used allusions, word games, wisecracks, analogies, and open-ended
anddisseminated suggestions. Erickson used the behaviour,
the attitudesof the subject and what he feels and thinks.
Erickson believed in the effectiveness
of the images and the kinesthetic memories.
Psycho-neural VA-E Model
By working, in a specific way, on some mental images it’s possible rapidly
to manage the emotion linked to themand the unpleasant behaviour,
because visual and Auditory stimuli are recorded in the brain
in specific neural tracts that are connected with the Emotional areas
and there is such connection-conditioning
so that mental images and emotions can be recalled reciprocally.
The recent advent of brain imaging techniques, combined with a
phenomenological paradigm, may reveal brain structures involved
with the process of consciousness alteration.
(Rainville Hofbauer,et al.,1999)
Information by Neurosciences on:
1 – What happens inside the brain when we use the areas of vision
and other areas linked to them.
2 – How the visual areas are connected with emotional areas
3 – How emotion connected with mental images
can become conditioned response and so influence behaviour.
The eye receptors change the light into electric signals that
reach the lateral geniculate body through the optic stretch until
to get to the visual cortex, maintaining a topographical order.
<<A complex rete of interconnections, continually recreated, interacts,
providing topographically organized representations
that have an energy which activates physiologic states and
consequent behaviour>> (A.R.Damasio,1995)
<<Topographic representation is a systematic relation
between one structure map and the next one: the several
points of the retina, the correspondent points of the
geniculate body, and these of the cortex, can be connected
by a continuous line>> (D.H. Hube 1988).
<<It’s true that the thought comprises also words and symbols, but both words
and symbolsare based on topographically organized representations
and can became images.>> (A.R.Damasio, 1995)
From the “priming” experiments we know that representations
are secretely elaborated, can influence the thought processes,
and can come back to the \ consciousness later.A.R.Damasio, 1995)
Steven Kosslyn and his group, Hanna Damasio and Thomas Grabownki
have found that the evoking of visual images
activates the visual cortex and the other areas
in which there are topographically organized representations.
<<The visual cortex analyses the visual signals,
if these are of an emotional type a signal reaches the amygdala
to activate the emotional circuits ( J.LeDoux 1999).
Neuroscientists today assert that a completely defined “emotional brain”
doesn’t exist, but instead, there are a lot of circuit systems
that allot the managementof a specific emotion
to different and dispersed, but coordinated, areas of the brain.
The emotions, as the attitudes, goals and intentions
are activated without awareness; they can influence the way in which
people think and act in social situations>> (J.A.Bargh 1990)
<<The primary visual area is connected also with the visual Thalamus which controls all the impulses deriving from the cortex. The thalamus elaborates impulses and distributes the elaborations to other different subcortical regions, including the Hippocampus and Amygdala, which seem to be involved in the emotional and cognitive functions such as the memory>> D.G.AmaraI1992
<<In my opinion to have a mind means this: an organism forms neural representations which can became image, can be manipolated in a process called images, can be manipulated in a process called thought and, at the end, can influence behaviour by helping to foresee the future and consequently to plane and choose the next action>> A.R.Damasio
Deductions of VA-E model
1- The images-representations of events that are emotionally saturated
are inclined to be fixed in the memory, and are more easily recalled.
2- An imaginary construction or what looks like the visual stimulus that
has produced the neural tracks can recall the emotion linked to that stimulus.
3- By modifying the images, in a specific way, we have the possibility to change
the emotions and the unplesant behaviour linked to them.
<<Erickson was a teacher in communication through images, thus he utilized
his tendency to treat essentially in terms of primary trials,of archaic language,
of emotions, of space and forms: that means of images>> (E.Rossi,Watzlawich)
The approach of Milton Erickson with the psycho-neural VA-E model
produces positive result in 6-8 sessions (10-12 hours of treatments)
Method
Our study had two aims:
1 -To determine the effectiveness of the 6-8 sessions of the treatment of anxiety
with Ericksonian approaches supported by psychoneural VA-E model.
2 -To measure the continuity of the efficiency.
Sample
The original sample consisted of 66 patients
(average age = 37.7 ± 10.1; 31 (47%) men and 35 women (53%).
We also collected data from a comparison group
that had received other treatment in the same number of sessions.
Measure
Patients were asked to rate their current level of anxiety on a 15 point scale,
ranging from not anxious to terribly anxious, before and after the treatment.
At the end of the treatment, an appointment was made
for a follow-up at 6 months.
Procedure
The treatment includes 6-8 sessions (10-12 hours of treatment).
The first one lasted two hours, while the duration of the remaining sessions
was about one hour and a half each.
If the therapist and the patient agreed to it,there were 2 or 3 additional sessions.
Two psychologists, one with considerable experience in hypnosis procedure,
the other with a good knowledge of the VA-E model, conducted the treatment.
The Inventory of State-Trait anxiety (S T P I)
C.Spel berger, RGcrsuch, RL ushene
State anxiety: how are you feel in this moment
Nil a little enought a lot
1- I feel calm. . . . .. . ………………………. 1 2 3 4
2 -I feel tranquil ……………… 1 2 3 4
3 -I feel tense …………………………… … 1 2 3 4
Trait anxiety: how you normally feel
1- I tire easily ………………… 1 2 3 4
2-I feel like crying …………. 1 2 3 4
3 -I would like to be happy like everybody 1 2 3 4
4 – I don’t make decision quickly enough 1 2 3 4
The S-R Inventory ofGeneral Trait Anxiousness (S-RG TA)
- S.Encll er, M. 0 kada
