Sources of Mental Imagery

Images Arising During Normal States

A. Proactive Visual Thinking – Intentional or spontaneous remembering, fantasizing, planning, considering, etc. This is by far the most common source of overt mental images. Imaging of this sort tends to be located "in front," i.e. before or behind the eyes at "visual home base."

B. Reactive Visual Thinking – Images arising in reaction to or in anticipation of events in specific sense gates. These, when combined with reactive verbal thinking and reactive subjective feeling, produce the impression of a "percipient self," i.e. a self that perceives and is separate from the objects of perception.

1. Images Arising in Reaction to External Sound

a) Object Images (mental picture of object producing sound, i.e. bird, car, airplane, person talking, etc.) These images are usually clear and located where the object actually resides in surrounding physical space.

b) Spatial Images (image of direction or region of space whence the sound comes.)

2. Images Arising in Reaction to Internal Talk

a) Images related to the topic of the talk, usually in front.

b) Images of imagined audience, listener or interlocutor for your internal conversation.

3. Images Arising in Reaction to Physical Touch

a) Mental pictures of whole body or specific location(s) in the body where a touch sensation is received, usually located where the body or body part is.

4. Images Arising in Reaction to Subjective Feeling

a) Mental picture of whole body or specific location(s) in body where feeling is perceived, usually located where the body or body part is.

b) Images related to the specific situation producing the feeling state, usually in front.

C. Orientation Images – Mental pictures of one's body and one's surroundings that arise , either spontaneously or stimulated by sound or touch, when one's eyes are closed. These images constantly remind us of who we are and where we are. As they become 1) clarified and 2) liquefied, we begin to feel less embedded in a particular situation.

Cathartic Imagery

A. Images Arising from the Unconscious as part of spontaneous or induced psychological catharsis

1. Historical – Images of actual events

2. Imagined – Real but not actual

3. Archetypal – Mythic but emotionally significant

Images Arising from Altered States

A. Altered Physiology

1. Hypnagogic imagery

2. Dream imagery

3. Sensory depravation imagery

4. Substance Related Imagery

a) Arising during intoxication

b) Arising during detoxification

5. Images Caused by Physical Stresses

a) Hunger / thirst

b) Sleep deprivation

c) Exposure to heat / cold

d) Pain / illness

e) Various other stresses

B. Altered Psychology

1. Healthy – Spiritual visions

2. Unhealthy – Hallucinations associated with neuroses / psychoses

Note: Although outlined here as a hierarchical "tree," many of these categories overlap. My goal is to cover the possibilities, not necessarily to partition them.

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