Mental imaging as a psychotherapeutic tool: a comparative study with reference to Britain and America

Studies have shown that mental imagery is necessary for proper mental functioning. This dissertation critically analyses the history and perceived significance of mental imagery as a psychotherapeutic tool in counselling in both the United States and Great Britain. The different routes the two countries have taken in phenomenological and behavioural schools of psychology are also examined. Teachers of counselling in the United States and Great Britain are then surveyed in order to compare the perceived significance mental imagery has as a therapeutic tool in each country. There is no other research to date which has worked with this data. The results suggest that due to the emphasis on behaviour therapy in the United States, although mental imagery is utilized in other historically significant psychologicaltherapies, it is only referred to in the United States with reference to behavioural approaches. The most notable approach being "systematic d e sensitization" . Because of this, the perceived significance of mental imagery as a psychotherapeutic tool is high among American counselling professionals only when linked to behavior therapy.Consequently, the perceived significance of mental imagery as a psychotherapeutic tool is lower when considering any other therapies outside of behaviourism. The results further suggest that counselling professionals in Great Britain havea higher perceived significance of mental imagery as a psychotherapeutic tool. A reason forth is may be because most counsellors in Great Britain are trained at institutes which often focus on particular theories rather than all of thehistorically significant ones. Further, Great Britain psychologists never rebuked the concept of mental imagery as psychologists did in America at the advent of behaviourism and "scientific thought" during the World Wars. Moreover, behaviourism, which initially rejected mental imagery, was not as widely appreciated in Great Britain during that time. Therefore, the mental image was still accepted as credible in the British psychological community. The outcome of the survey suggests that in America the growth of mental imagery as a psychotherapeutic tool isinhibited by the lack of references to mental imagery usage with in historically significant therapies. I f the study of these therapies among American counselling students is to continue, a systematic examination on mental imagery usage could heighten the perceived significance among American practitioners. This, in turn, could pave the way for the emergence of more imagery methods in American psychologicalcounsellin

Trivialized Content, Elevated From: Aesthetics of Secrecy in Turkish Politics in the 2000s

This essay will first provide a brief history of the Islamist party\u27s coming to power by means of its effective use of a populist imagery. The paper will then focus on the emergence of a new regime of secrecy in Turkish politics by looking at two high-profile legal cases, Ergenekon and the “Cosmic Room,” in which one can observe the blueprints of a struggle between different factions for taking over the state. During the investigations, secret documents about the wrongdoings of the secular establishment were leaked to and widely covered by the media. Sober debates on the contents of such documents were dwarfed by the tendency to scandalize, stigmatize, and foster fascination for the purported clandestine organizations within the state in line with conspiracist aesthetics. In later sections of the paper, the elements of entertainment and seriousness of this conspiracist aesthetics are analyzed

Spectators’ aesthetic experiences of sound and movement in dance performance

In this paper we present a study of spectators’ aesthetic experiences of sound and movement in live dance performance. A multidisciplinary team comprising a choreographer, neuroscientists and qualitative researchers investigated the effects of different sound scores on dance spectators. What would be the impact of auditory stimulation on kinesthetic experience and/or aesthetic appreciation of the dance? What would be the effect of removing music altogether, so that spectators watched dance while hearing only the performers’ breathing and footfalls? We investigated audience experience through qualitative research, using post-performance focus groups, while a separately conducted functional brain imaging (fMRI) study measured the synchrony in brain activity across spectators when they watched dance with sound or breathing only. When audiences watched dance accompanied by music the fMRI data revealed evidence of greater intersubject synchronisation in a brain region consistent with complex auditory processing. The audience research found that some spectators derived pleasure from finding convergences between two complex stimuli (dance and music). The removal of music and the resulting audibility of the performers’ breathing had a significant impact on spectators’ aesthetic experience. The fMRI analysis showed increased synchronisation among observers, suggesting greater influence of the body when interpreting the dance stimuli. The audience research found evidence of similar corporeally focused experience. The paper discusses possible connections between the findings of our different approaches, and considers the implications of this study for interdisciplinary research collaborations between arts and sciences

Counterparts: Clothing, value and the sites of otherness in Panapompom ethnographic encounters

This is an Author's Accepted Manuscript of an article published in Anthropological Forum, 18(1), 17-35, 2008 [copyright Taylor & Francis], available online at: http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/00664670701858927.Panapompom people living in the western Louisiade Archipelago of Milne Bay Province, Papua New Guinea, see their clothes as indices of their perceived poverty. ‘Development’ as a valued form of social life appears as images that attach only loosely to the people employing them. They nevertheless hold Panapompom people to account as subjects to a voice and gaze that is located in the imagery they strive to present: their clothes. This predicament strains anthropological approaches to the study of Melanesia that subsist on strict alterity, because native self‐judgments are located ‘at home’ for the ethnographer. In this article, I develop the notion of the counterpart as a means to explore these forms of postcolonial oppression and their implications for the ethnographic encounter

Is imagination too liberal for modal epistemology?

Appealing to imagination for modal justification is very common. But not everyone thinks that all imaginings provide modal justification. Recently, Gregory and Kung :620–663, 2010) have independently argued that, whereas imaginings with sensory imageries can justify modal beliefs, those without sensory imageries don’t because of such imaginings’ extreme liberty. In this essay, I defend the general modal epistemological relevance of imagining. I argue, first, that when the objections that target the liberal nature of non-sensory imaginings are adequately developed, those objections also threaten the sensory imaginings. So, if we think that non-sensory imaginings are too liberal for modal justification, we should say the same about sensory imaginings. I’ll finish my defense by showing that, when it comes to deciding between saying that all imaginings are prima facie justificatory and saying that no imaginings are justificatory, there is an independent reason for accepting the former

Yoga, Christians Practicing Yoga, and God: On Theological Compatibility, or Is There a Better Question?

Houston is a wildly diverse city; nonetheless it should come as no surprise that the Houston Chronicle “Belief” section frequently features stories about church expansions or declines, pastoral developments, and other reports on Christian communities. Christians, after all, make up over 70% of the city’s population. A provocative cover of a 2011 Belief section, however, shed light on a very different face of religion in Houston. The cover featured an image of local yoga teacher and entrepreneur Jennifer Buergermeister donning fashionable yoga attire and in the posture of a South Asian goddess, complete (thanks to clever photography) with six arms. The headline read, “THE SOUL OF YOGA.” In the article, journalist Shellnutt quotes Buergermeister on how yoga helped her connect with “God as a creator, as a source” and brought her “closer to my divinity.” Another local yoga teacher and entrepreneur, Roger Rippy, was also interviewed for the article and is quoted denying that yoga is a religion because it is not based in dogma, but it is, nonetheless, “about your own particular practice and your own particular relationship with God.”