Psychophysiology of imagery and healing: A systems perspective

This chapter begins with clinical examples that highlight multilevel, multiprocess effects involved in complex self-generated imagery. It presents a general, biopsychosocial theory of the relationship between imagery and healing. Organized hierarchically, the disciplines emerge from philosophy and mathematics, to physics and physical chemistry, to chemistry and biochemistry, to cellular biology and organ physiology, to psychophysiology and psychology, to social psychology and sociology, to political science and economics, to government and ecology, and so forth. Being a psychoanalyst, the patient was prone to free associate. Engel and colleagues were conducting pioneering biofeedback research in the late 1960‘s, teaching patients to reduce their preventricular contraction’s (PVC) by control using their heart rate. Engel discovered that, for some patients heart rate increases were associated with reduced PVC’s, for other patients heart rate decreases were associated with reduced PVC’s, and for some patients heart rate was unrelated to PVC’s.