Recently Eclipsi has published an interesting book, in the series Cognitive sciences and psychotherapyentitled “The imaginative techniques in cognitive therapy – assessment and treatment strategies based on the IMEGERY”.
The volume, whose original title is “Oxford Guide to Imagery in Cognitive Therapy”, was curated by Ann Hackmann, James Bennett-Levy and Emily Holmes For Oxford University Press (2011). The manual collects the contributions of several perpetrators certainly thick and caliber, including J. Beck, A. Arnerz or C. Padesky.
THE’Imagory It is not a new concept for the Cognitive behavioral therapy. Already in the 1950s and 1960s it was an integral part of techniques such as, for example, Flooding, systematic desensitization or exhibitions in imagination.
In the following decades, several cognitive behavioral authors and therapists have remarked its importance. Despite this, the use of the IMagery has never been the subject of a real systematization within the panorama of Cognitive behavioral intervention techniques.
Hackmann, Bennett-Levy and Holmes try to fill this gap, trying to build a manual that organizes all the current knowledge on the IMEGERY and proposes a structured intervention protocol.
As a whole, the volume, made up of about 290 pag. And from 14 chapters, it presents itself agile and flowing reading. Basically, it is possible to divide the volume into three parts: up to the fourth chapter, the authors face the definition of the concept of Imagory, its phenomenology and review what is currently present in the literature; The chapters from fifth to seventh are dedicated to Assessment strategies and the preparation of theintervention on the IMERY; From the eighth onwards, the authors dedicate themselves to the description of the intervention procedures.
A separate mention must be given to the introduction, the reading of which is the volume by itself. Curated by D. Edwards, it is admirably dedicated to demonstrating how the concept of Imagory has been central during humanity since its dawn thousands and thousands of years ago.
The first part of the volume is, however, dedicated to clinical concept of the IMERY. Specifically, the second chapter seems to be the most interesting: he faces the concept and phenomenology of the IMEGERY, explaining what the characteristics of the IMEGERY are and what the specific content of the IMERY are in the various disorders.
As mentioned, chapters 5, 6 and 7 are dedicated to the assessment and procedures for the preparation for the use of Techniques based on the IMERY. The illustrated procedures represent an interesting challenge for the cognitivist therapist, since they invite him to a different way to proceed in the investigation and formulation of the case.
The third part, that is, the chapters from the eighth in the end, are dedicated to intervention techniques and therefore represent the most attractive and interesting part. In particular, the first chapters are dedicated to how to intervene on negative and disturbing mental images, while in the last the procedures are indicated to create positive and new images for patients: as indicated by the title of the thirteenth chapter “positive imagiling: create new ways of being”.
In conclusion, the volume has the undoubted merit of systematizing and proposing a different way, albeit already widely known in the cognitive behavioral field, of intervention with patients.
The intent of the authors, in this sense, is not to propose a new form of psychotherapy, since the reference to the cognitivist frame is strong, even if, as it appears clearly from the introduction of the authors themselves and the contents of the volume, there is a certain attention to the protocols of the so -called “third generation”.
