The Application of Facilitated Imagery to Marital Counseling

SUMMARY

The purpose of this study was to assess whether facilitated imagery is a successful technique for improving both marital satisfaction and individual psychological functioning. Twenty marital couples were randomly assigned to two experimental groups: Both received three sessions of structured marital enrichment and one also received three facilitated imagery sessions. Posttests were given at one month and four months following treatment. Subjects exposed to facilitated imagery showed significantly greater improvement on some scales of marital satisfaction and individual psychological functioning, and these improvements persisted at the four-month posttest. In posttest interviews, subjects reported the primary benefit was insight into themselves and their spouses.

A series of 2x(3) repeated measure analyses of variance were used to detect changes for husbands and wives. Subjects exposed to facilitated imagery reported significantly greater improvement than enrichment-only subjects on some scales of marital satisfaction and individual psychological functioning. In addition, improvements persisted at the four-month posttest for the enrichment-plus-imagery subjects, but declined for the enrichment-only subjects. In interviews, the majority of imagery subjects reported that the process had been helpful to them both personally and relationally. Subjectively they reported gaining insight into themselves or their spouse as the primary benefit obtained from the imagery work.

Key Words:

• Imagery
• couples therapy
• marital therapy
• hypnosis
• marital enrichment