Creative Methods, Images and Dreams in Psychotherapy: Methods, Processes and Results

A special issue of Behavioral Sciences (ISSN 2076-328X). This special issue belongs to the section "Psychiatric, Emotional and Behavioral Disorders".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 28 February 2025 | Viewed by 1053

Special Issue Editor


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Guest Editor
1. Clinical Psychology, Catholic University of Applied Sciences Freiburg, 79104 Freiburg, Germany
2. Faculty of Psychology, University of Basel, 4055 Basel, Switzerland
3. Psychotherapy Science, Sigmund Freud Universität Linz, Linz, Austria
Interests: analytical psychology; couple counselling; postmodern identity construction; narrative/interpretative research; media psychology

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

At the very beginning of psychotherapy, working with dreams was introduced by Freud as a therapeutic method. A few years later, CG Jung introduced working with images and artistic creations in psychotherapy. The basic idea behind these approaches is that dreams, imaginations and other creative productions provide access to (unconscious) material that should be focused in the course of psychotherapy, and on the other hand, contain constructive impulses in the sense of resources which can support progress in psychotherapy. However, working with these methods has spread into many different psychotherapeutic approaches, even beyond psychoanalysis, and numerous therapeutic approaches and methodologies have developed either as part of broader approaches (e.g., in analytical psychology) or as distinct psychotherapies (e.g., Sandplay Therapy). Nevertheless, the process models of how these methods foster therapeutic change and research on such processes are still scarce, and the evidence base for the effectiveness of such approaches is limited.

We welcome submissions to this Special Issue, either in the form of theoretical articles and empirical studies, or as reviews and metanalyses which (a) develop theoretical process models of how creative methods, images and dreams support the process of change in psychotherapy; (b) investigate empirically processes of change in psychotherapies, making use of creative methods, images and dreams; (c) investigate empirically the efficacy and/or effectiveness of the use of creative methods, images and dreams in psychotherapies.

Prof. Dr. Christian Roesler
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

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Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2200 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • creative methods in psychotherapy
  • art therapy
  • dreams in psychotherapy/dream interpretation
  • images and imagination in psychotherapy
  • process models
  • efficacy/effectiveness studies

Published Papers (1 paper)

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Research

13 pages, 253 KiB  
Article
Understanding Spontaneous Symbolism in Psychotherapy Using Embodied Thought
by Erik Goodwyn
Behav. Sci. 2024, 14(4), 319; https://doi.org/10.3390/bs14040319 - 12 Apr 2024
Viewed by 675
Abstract
Spontaneous, unwilled subjective imagery and symbols (including dreams) often emerge in psychotherapy that can appear baffling and confound interpretation. Early psychoanalytic theories seemed to diverge as often as they agreed on the meaning of such content. Nevertheless, after reviewing key findings in the [...] Read more.
Spontaneous, unwilled subjective imagery and symbols (including dreams) often emerge in psychotherapy that can appear baffling and confound interpretation. Early psychoanalytic theories seemed to diverge as often as they agreed on the meaning of such content. Nevertheless, after reviewing key findings in the empirical science of spontaneous thought as well as insights gleaned from neuroscience and especially embodied cognition, it is now possible to construct a more coherent theory of interpretation that is clinically useful. Given that thought is so thoroughly embodied, it is possible to demonstrate that universalities in human physiology yield universalities in thought. Such universalities can then be demonstrated to form a kind of biologically directed universal “code” for understanding spontaneous symbolic expressions that emerge in psychotherapy. An example is given that illustrates how this can be applied to clinical encounters. Full article
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