The case histories given below show the variety of applications in which eidetic imagery may be used. This sampling of case histories is only to provide a flavor and does not by any means encompass the whole spectrum of applications, techniques, image instructions, or images.
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A Case of Backache: Isolation from Mother
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A Case of Angina
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A Case of Broken Wrist Bone
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A Case of Ulcerative Colitis Connected with Parental Fights
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A Case of Allergy to Melon
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A Case of Coughing, Choking, and Breathing Difficulty
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A Case of Inability to See in Evening, Lethargy, and Lack of Interest
A Case of Backache: Isolation from Mother
NMA, male, age 39, was suffering from long-standing severe backache symptoms. The present acute attack started with the small of the back stiffening and then slowly tightening into a knot, to the point that the patient could not bend even slightly. The parental images were explored till a special imagery sequence was selected concerning the mother, and was then developed in detail. This procedure directly resulted in healing of the symptom. The reaction to the first exposure to the many layered mother image was of anger, a factual part of an early historical relationship with the mother. This image of the mother, however, became quickly connected with an even earlier image of the mother in which she appeared isolated and depressed, causing immense mental pain to the patient. The sequence of images from this point onward proceeded along the other layers of defense against early trauma connected with the mother, and the tendency to criticize the mother’s isolation and depression. The defense next took the form of daydreaming and wandering away from concentration on the traumatic image. The so-called evaluative and mature adult concepts, as well as runaway thought behaviors, were now ignored in favor of image concentration. Near the final moment of deeply centered concentration, feelings of self-pity; then a feeling of deep empathy for the mother emerged, directly leading to relief from the backache symptom. Healing at this final layer of image experience indicated that “mature adult concepts” had prevented the patient from making full contact with his earlier empathic feelings toward the mother. The tendency to “examine” the mother’s image, to “evaluate” her condition through the mature and distant rationality was, in fact, directly responsible for the symptom of backache, since these meant, withholding from a loved object, which was the mother.[1]
[1] Dolan, Anna, Imagery Treatment of Phobias, Anxiety States and Other Symptom Complexes in Akhter Ahsen’s Image Psychology, (New York: Brandon House, Inc., 1997), p. 118.
A Case of Angina
LRM, male, age 37, suffered from angina pectoris, pain in the left arm and shoulder area. He was administered the Eidetic Parents Test, and the parental images involving imagery relationships were studied. He was asked to see his parents’ images standing in front of him and to examine how they occupy the space and what influence they have on him. He reported: “I find that my father appears on the right and my mother on the left. My mother’s face appears somewhat forbidding and angry in the image. My father on the right looks indifferent and helpless, as if he cannot help me for some reason. This is what I feel from him in the picture; he is willing, but he cannot help me, and it is not clear why.”
The patient was asked to focus on the father’s image and to report on his feelings. He said: “When I focus on his image directly, the pain in my left arm increases; my mother is still on the left and appears even more forbidding. When I look at her, I feel uneasy and confused.” After this the patient was asked to mentally switch the parents’ image positions in front so that his mother was now on the right and his father was on the left. The mood in the new images dramatically changed; in fact, transformed into the opposite. The patient said: “It is surprising. My mother is somewhat vague and on the right; my father is clear and smiling and on the left. In the new picture both my parents are welcoming the transformed atmosphere, and both look younger.” As the patient watched the new images, a comforting feeling developed in his left arm, and he reported: “There is no pain in my left arm any longer. If, however, I return to the position I originally saw my parents in, the pain tends to return somewhat.” He was asked to keep his parents in the new position and to concentrate on the new relationship with them, which was very relaxing to him. After practicing this particular image and its related imagery effects over the next few weeks, the patient was healed of his angina. Five years of follow-up disclosed no recurrence of the symptom.[1]
[1] Dolan, Anna, Imagery Treatment of Phobias, Anxiety States and Other Symptom Complexes in Akhter Ahsen’s Image Psychology, (New York: Brandon House, Inc., 1997), p. 124.
A Case of Broken Wrist Bone
TAF, male, age 39, had suffered a broken wrist in a motorcycle accident in which the motorcycle he was riding collided with a car. Four months later when the cast from his hand and forearm was removed, a marked limitation of function at the elbow joint was noted. There was evidence of severe restriction in flexion and extension of the arm, inability to proximate the thumb and index finger and signs of excessive calcification of one wrist bone secondary to impaired blood supply. The patient had now been advised to undergo a surgical operation aimed at removal of one of the wrist bones.
Imagery treatment involving anatomical intervention was implemented in order to avert surgical measures and to remove calcification in the area of the injury. It proceeded in two parts: (1) positive father image and (2) accident image. The response from the patient describes how these images affected the area in question.
The patient was asked to see his father massaging his wrist. He said: “My father, in the image, massages my wrist, and it loosens up. My hand stretches up in response and the tensions fall away so completely that I feel totally relaxed. I am surprised by the relaxation. In half a second the feeling develops to a pitch; before, I was afraid even to move my wrist. While doing this image my wrist moves quite freely, without pain or apprehension of pain on my part, especially the latter. It feels so good to see that I can move my wrist as I like.”
The patient was next asked to see how he tried to stop the motorcycle before it collided with the car. In the image he saw himself twisting and pumping the handle to apply the brake. As this image was repeated, he found that he was spontaneously turning his wrists as well as his arm. This further helped mobilize the wrist and the elbow joint and removed apprehensions and fears concerning the area.
As a result of the eidetic image exercises, within two days, relaxation returned to the elbow joint which had been stiff, and the wrist and finger movements became free. The imagery exercises were conducted for two more weeks. The next routine x-ray showed that the blood supply had been restored and excessive calcification had been reversed.[1]
[1] Dolan, Anna, Imagery Treatment of Phobias, Anxiety States and Other Symptom Complexes in Akhter Ahsen’s Image Psychology, (New York: Brandon House, Inc., 1997), pp. 125-126.
A Case of Ulcerative Colitis Connected with Parental Fights
PGK, female, age 24, suffered from acute ulcerative colitis over the past one year, and it had been recommended that she undergo surgical treatment due to the extreme seriousness of her condition. After study of the symptom through various levels of imagery, a specific eidetic image for the treatment of her condition was developed. The image involved memories of parents fighting, and her grandmother’s taking care of her swollen feet during an especially severe winter. In this special image the grandmother was seen soaking her feet in a bucket of warm water, which appeared to help her emotionally, creating pleasant feelings in the body where she was symptomatically experiencing ulcerative colitis. This repeated projection of the grandmother’s image tending her swollen feet cured the acute ulcerative attack within a few days, and she experienced complete healing in a month. Follow-up over the next five years did not show any recurrence.[1]
[1] Dolan, Anna, Imagery Treatment of Phobias, Anxiety States and Other Symptom Complexes in Akhter Ahsen’s Image Psychology, (New York: Brandon House, Inc., 1997), p. 127.
A Case of Allergy to Melon
3-U, a female 40 years of age, had an aversion to the smell of melon, along with a strong allergic reaction. Briefly, the subject was first instructed to see the image of smelling or eating melon and then to see the same image while keeping her mother/father in mind, allowing the smell of melon to mix with other sensory modalities.
The patient reported: “The smell of melons creates nausea in me in reality as well as in the image.” After this initial explanatory remark concerning the melon, she was asked to smell the melon in the image and note the kind of feelings she got. She was then asked to keep her mother in mind and experience the melon image again. She said, “There is a very strong feeling of nausea with an anxiety feeling in my heart, like fear.”
After the above testing of the image, she was asked to keep her father in mind and smell the melon. She said: “The smell is neutral. I am not liking it though. It is growing, the seeds and the gook in the melon. I smell it again and it is more neutral. I felt a little anxiety in my heart, and pain. I now have a lot of anxiety and fear which is growing and I remember the incident in which my mother had pulled a knife on my father, and the next day she was cutting a melon with the same big, sharp knife. The kitchen had been filled with the melon smell and it was nauseating and I was afraid of her. I backed out of the kitchen as she was talking to me.”
Following this the subject was asked to experience the image of the melon again by keeping her father in mind. She reported: “I am sitting in my father’s lap and he is enjoying eating the melon. That is an image and not a real event that I remember involving my father. I can bear the smell of the melon though I do not want it myself. I see my father and the melon both clearly in the image.”
By this time two conditions of the image had become estatblished: (1) Keeping the father in mind as the melon is seen: the father is not in the form of an image, but there is a sense of him in the mind, and the melon is the glaring thing. (2) Keeping the father in mind as an image in which she is in his lap and he is eating the melon: In the image the melon is much more positive and the smell is neutralized. About the second image the patient said, “He is more clear than the melon, the smell is not in the forefront. My father’s smell or his body is more in the forefront.”
As the subject concentrated on the melon smell, she was asked also to examine her father’s smell. She said: “It is mildly there, a kind of sense of the smell, like his body texture, his jacket, shirt, beard, skin. I feel safe. I am glad he is home. I want to breathe more now. There is a desire to pull down my diaphragm and gulp in a little air.”
The induction of other textures in the sensory experience, such as the texture of her father’s jacket, beard, skin, etc., in the image of the melon smell were useful: “I feel less nauseous now and a little hungry. I had not eaten today.” It was clear that smells are not isolated by themselves but are intermixed with other sensory textures which are not of the nature of the smell, and altogether they serve as essential components of the texture of smell. She said, “I have a feeling of a horrible scream in the center of my diaphragm, like I want to scream. Maybe it is connected with the sight of when my mother pulled the knife on my father. It was in the middle of the night and I had woken up and saw the scene. I had whimpered but perhaps I had wanted to scream. In reality I only whimpered.” At this stage, when the scream image came there was no smell in the melon, or any other smell with the texture of the father inducted into it. However, the texture of the father in terms of his beard, jacket, and shirt could still be evoked in the melon smell, which was tried again. She said: “In the forefront is the body texture of my father and the smell of his presence, and connected with it is the melon smell. It is funny that the melon is so juicy but my mouth is so totally dry. He offers a little, a bite, but I do not want it. I do not mind his eating it.” Finally, the texture of her father did clearly appear in the melon smell, starting with the juicy feeling of melon in her mouth: “I am biting the melon. My mouth is wet in the image but my real mouth is dry. I am right now gulping saliva. I have all kinds of feelings in my mouth, my teeth, my gums, my glands. I can’t smell the melon at all. In the image, however, the juicy feeling is likeable, although I am not enjoying it in my own mouth. I am happy to be eating with him. I have now a strange taste in my real mouth, right now.”
At this moment the subject was asked to enjoy the juicy feeling in the image: “I am enjoying the juicy feeling although my mouth does not feel better. It has a horrible feeling. Now my mouth is not dry but wetter. The feeling is that I want to eat with my father because he is enjoying it. I want to eat what he is offering. The juicy feeling is good in the image. I ate my whole piece down to the green stuff. The bad taste in my mouth is a little less. I want to brush my teeth.” At this point the clear image of the melon smell became unvivid. She said: “For the life of me, I can’t smell the melon any longer. I keep putting my nose down to it to smell it but I can’t. I used to be able to do it at the drop of a hat. I would just think of the smell and it would be there. I remember that allergic attack from the melon used to get into my ears and chest, and then it would go with other fruits, anything too ripe. I am feeling better in my ears, and do not feel nauseous or dizzy. My mind is no longer disoriented and there is no confusion. The acute anxiety is not there, no panic, no fear, and I am a little hungry. There is no disgust toward food. But there is a little itching in my skin.”
At this stage we tried to put various smells of the father into the melon image. The subject reported the following: “I tried the smell of my father’s feet and tried to reflect it in the melon, but I could not. I like the smell of his feet, since it reminds me of when he would come in the house after work and immediately take off his shoes. But I now am smelling perfume instead, a sweet smell, like perfume. He generally did not wear cologne or perfume. As I put my nose on the juicy melon, I do not smell his feet, but this perfume. It is subtle. It is a perfume. I don’t know where the perfume is from. I can see the perfume is connected with the melon. Now the melon smells like sweet perfume. It is strange. It is perplexing. I like the smell of the perfume in the melon. It is a very subtle smell. It is very interesting, very interesting.
“There is no itching in my skin. The perfume in the juicy melon, with my father in mind as an image, leads to the smell of his feet in the melon. The perfume is a little vague now. With my father in mind, the melon smells good.
“Once my mother saw my father kissing a woman at a party and she yelled and screamed about it for months and it seemed like forever. The feminine perfume may be a reminder of it. Maybe the fight with the knife had to do with it. I throw the melon at my father’s face for causing all this trouble. Take it. I do not want to be involved in it. I want adults as parents and not crazy people. Now I feel less itchy. My affection is for him and I want him to be careful. Why did he have to kiss someone at the party? Because of the type of person my mother was? I do not think he ran around with women. Maybe he used to try to annoy her deliberately. He used to work 70 hours a week and did not have time for this. She once said that he might run away with this woman, a woman I knew that he did not even like.
“I am now able to smell the melon with my father in the image. The body smell, the feeling of melon smell is also there. I am sitting in his lap and eating the melon, the juicy melon. He wipes his face and says, ‘Ha, ha, ha.” There is still that perfume, a gentle scent of a perfume in the melon. It is a feminine smell, a pleasant perfume smell in the melon. The melon looks good.” In the next projection she said, “There is no aversion to it but no smell either.” After three more attempts she said about the melon, “It looks good in my father’s mouth or independently in my own mouth. The melon is sweet and fragrant and has no connection with my mother any longer in the visual or smell area. The melon is a rich and juicy fruit.”[1]
[1] Dolan, Anna, Imagery Treatment of Phobias, Anxiety States and Other Symptom Complexes in Akhter Ahsen’s Image Psychology, (New York: Brandon House, Inc., 1997), pp. 128-129.
A Case of Coughing, Choking, and Breathing Difficulty
AX-28, male, age 36, had been experiencing coughing, choking and difficulty in breathing over the last one year. The patient was a fireman and the symptoms were traced to a fire incident in his apartment building when he was off duty. When the fire broke out, he first ran in fear, leaving the building, but when he got outside he became ashamed and returned to help others get out. By this time the fire had spread and the building was filled with smoke. Even though he had brought many people to safety, some died in the fire. His doubts persisted following the incident about whether he had acted properly by first running away from the scene of the fire. The image in which he felt ashamed standing outside and returned to the building was repeated to restore his faith in himself. The coughing and choking feeling from the smoke, coupled with awareness of his attempts to save others, abolished the symptoms.[1]
[1] Dolan, Anna, Imagery Treatment of Phobias, Anxiety States and Other Symptom Complexes in Akhter Ahsen’s Image Psychology, (New York: Brandon House, Inc., 1997), p. 258.
A Case of Inability to See in Evening, Lethargy, and Lack of Interest
AX-30, male, age 46, complained of inability to see clearly in the evening, feelings of lethargy and lack of interest in doing things. These symptoms were traced thirty-five years back, to the time when his father died and his mother, a few years later, remarried. The patient had a most traumatic life at the hand of his stepfather, who used to humiliate him. The trauma would begin in the evening when the stepfather would return from his job. The patient used to shudder at the very thought of his coming home. He remembered that his own father also used to return from work in the evening, but the prospect of his return used to fill him with happiness. To counteract anxiety from the stepfather, the patient was asked to see images of his own father returning home in the evening. These images were developed into images of his father fighting with the stepfather and throwing him out of the house. The images flowed into all the situations in which the patient had been humiliated, resulting in healing.[1]
[1] Dolan, Anna, Imagery Treatment of Phobias, Anxiety States and Other Symptom Complexes in Akhter Ahsen’s Image Psychology, (New York: Brandon House, Inc., 1997), p. 260.
