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The Power of Imagination

Close your eyes and think of what your loved one looks like when he or she is not around. What is their hair color? What’s their shape of face, nose, and mouth? Did you manage to do that?

The inner eye creates the world

Wahrscheinlich ja. Normalerweise ist es nicht sehr schwierig für uns. Ein Mensch kann mit seinem „geistigen Auge“ leicht eine Person oder einen Gegenstand sehen, der gerade nicht da ist. Solche mentalen Bilder sind mentale Repräsentationen, die in der Vorstellung erscheinen. Und sie sind nicht auf Bilder beschränkt. Die meisten Menschen können im Geiste ein Lieblingslied summen, eine Zitrone schmecken, frisch gemähtes Gras riechen, Sandpapier anfassen und sich sogar an die Empfindungen erinnern, die sie bei einer körperlichen Aktivität hatten.

Die Vorstellungskraft – die kreativste unserer Kräfte 

The imagination is the mental process of recreating previously perceived objects or creating new ones by combining known elements. The imagination updates our previous experiences in the form of images and therefore there is a close relationship between imagination and pictorial memory. Imaginative memory gives an exact reproduction of a past experience, while imagination gives a generalized image in which details are blurred or new images are created from known elements. Imagination can be understood as a creative transformation of previous experience. It does not give an objective reconstruction of the past but a free reproduction of past images. The transformations may be so significant that the presented image does not resemble the given reality at all.

Many researchers point out that people's memories of past emotional states or emotional events can be partially reconstructed (interpreted) through the prism of current evaluations of specific events. "Like memories of everyday events, emotional memories change over time and may be influenced by post factum experiences and evaluations." For example, Holberg and Holmes found in published research as early as 1994 that husbands whose marriages became less happy over time recalled early marital relationships more negatively than they initially did.

Everyone, based on his or her knowledge and experiences, may form images of what he or she desires, what he or she dreams of, but which does not exist in reality at the moment or may not even exist in the future. However, images are not a false representation of reality and transformations do not lead to

a false knowledge of reality. By creating new images we counteract the patterns of human action and thinking and look for new, more beneficial solutions.

Jeder Mensch hat eine Phantasie, aber nicht jeder hat die gleiche. Wie wir sie einsetzen, hängt von vielen Faktoren ab. Sie wird beeinflusst von der Funktionsweise unseres Nervensystems, von früheren Erfahrungen, von unserer emotionalen Entwicklung, aber auch von weniger „bedeutenden“ Phänomenen wie dem Luftdruck, der Luftfeuchtigkeit oder dem, was wir am Vortag gegessen haben. Die Arbeit der Vorstellungskraft wird auf die gleiche Weise beeinflusst wie der allgemeine emotionale Zustand. Sind wir in schlechter Stimmung wird uns unsere Vorstellungskraft düstere Visionen bescheren. Haben wir gute Laune sind unsere Visionen energisch und optimistisch. Die Vorstellungskraft spielt eine große Rolle im menschlichen Leben, denn dank ihr können wir unsere Persönlichkeit formen. Wir können gute Ergebnisse in der Schule und bei der Arbeit erzielen. Unsere Vorstellungskraft kann uns durch Motivation zu bestimmten Handlungen beruflichen Erfolg bringen. Wenn wir uns vorstellen, dass wir in der Lage sind, eine Prüfung zu bestehen oder das gewünschte Studium zu absolvieren, werden wir uns selbst mobilisieren, um in dieser Richtung zu handeln.

Imagination also warns us about various dangers. We can avoid many annoyances, troubles when imagination tells us what can be a consequence of rash, unwise actions. Imagination can make us sad or cheer us up. Sometimes, despite us, we imagine unbelievable things, because someone is late for an appointment, when in fact nothing happens, and the person simply forgot about the meeting. We need imagination for normal functioning in everyday life, for proper relations between people, for learning, personal development, developing of our interests.

How the power of our imagination can help us change our lives 

Mentale Imaginationen sind für Psychologen sowohl in der Forschung als auch in der Therapie von Interesse. In Anbetracht ihrer Bedeutung für das menschliche emotionale Funktionieren lohnt es sich, eine von Stephen Kosslyn und seinen Kollegen vorgeschlagene Metapher zu verwenden, die Imaginationen mit dem „Sehen mit dem geistigen Auge“ oder dem „Hören mit dem geistigen Ohr“ vergleicht.

Thus, mental imagery is considered to be an experience resembling sensory perception but taking place in the absence of sensory stimuli. Moreover, it has also been observed that imaginations rely on the same mechanisms that memory relates to one's past. Peter Lang proposed in his theory of imagination to treat it as a basis for therapeutic work aimed at modification of emotional reactions (e.g., reduction of anxiety). This is possible thanks to the ability of mental representations to activate networks of information about situations or stimuli that evoke emotions: their perceptual and semantic properties, but also physiological and behavioral reactions in response to these situations.

Most often, people use information stored in memory when forming imaginations. But they can be formed also based on elements that memory contains. A person with a rich imagination is, therefore, able to create images of events that he or she has not experienced (e.g., what it would be like to fly into space) or of non-existent objects (e.g., a dog with two heads). Such skills allow us to analyze past events, plan for the future, or fantasize about things that will never happen. According to research by Daniel Reisberg's team at Reed College in Portland, however, people differ in the ease with which they create mental images. This has also been confirmed in recent years through functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies.

 

Neuropsychologists estimate that pictorial imagery activates 90 percent of the same brain regions responsible for actual perceptual tasks. That the same brain regions are involved in imagining and acting is also supported by the findings of Peter Dominey and his team at the French Stem Cell and Brain Research Institute. In this study, patients with brain-damaging Parkinson's disease were asked to repeat a sequence of finger movements. As expected, they performed them more slowly than healthy subjects. Surprisingly, however, they also took longer to imagine the activity.

 

Stephen Kosslyn and Samuel Moulton of Harvard University believe that one of the most remarkable aspects of imagination is that a person can use it to access his or her implicit memory, that is, the memory whose manifestations are found in behavior rather than in the conscious reproduction of remembered information. For example, it has been shown that imagining the action of reaching for an object takes a similar amount of time as performing it. In another study, participants in one group were asked to imagine walking a certain distance and pressing a button when they reached their destination. The other group actually performed this task. The running times of both groups were similar.

However, when the subjects were asked to do the same thing but with an imagined or actual load on their backs, imagining walking the distance took longer than actually walking it. Walking the distance, on the other hand, took the same amount of time as without the load. The imaginings did not take into account that one could simply put more energy into performing the task, but thus maintain a pace equal to that without the extra weight.

Kosslyn and Moulton thus suggest that imagination is not a simple representation of the contents of memory, but rather a reflection of our expectations, assuming, for example, that people with a load go slower.

Durch diese Prozesse schaffen wir eine Vision der Zukunft, beobachten sie mit einem inneren Auge und können… unsere Ängste abbauen. Denn wenn jemand in der Lage ist, sich in aller Ruhe, in einem Sessel sitzend, bei einer Tasse Tee, einen zukünftigen unangenehmen Umstand detailliert vorzustellen, hat er diese Angelegenheit in gewisser Weise hinter sich. Wenn man sich die schlimmsten Dinge, die passieren können, vorstellt, kann man sie unter „Labor“-Bedingungen und in Sicherheit überleben, was eine angstlösende Wirkung hat. Das Schlimmste sind neue Situationen, in denen man nicht weiß, wie man sich verhalten soll. Wenn man etwas in der Vorstellung erlebt, sind die Bedingungen nicht mehr neu und somit weniger beängstigend.

With the Herzog method, your own imagination comes into play 

Here comes our LUMEUS training. It is heavily based on the above findings. Created by Dagmar Herzog training program works on a similar principle. It consists of powerful emotional exercises that reduce anxiety and stress, boost self-confidence, and stimulate metabolism. The uniqueness of it is that the spoken visualizations and the film music are composed especially for those Harmonies. Together, they trigger strong emotions in the listener and lead quickly and permanently to a positive change in behavior. By experiencing positive feelings in the visualizations - which are fantasy journeys that evoke emotions in combination with classical music – adults and children learn to reduce stress, anxiety, and depressive moods themselves.

Most perceptions are formed intentionally when they are needed for some reason. This intentionality is also one of the reasons why people usually have no problem distinguishing between imaginings and perceptions. Cases in which such difficulties do arise, however, usually involve people who are hallucinating. Research by Dominic Ffytche of King's College has shown that when hallucinations occur, regions of the brain responsible for visual processing are aroused - for example, color hallucinations activate areas of the brain associated with color vision. However, this is a special case. So why aren't imaginings usually mistaken for actual perceptions?

Psychologists Michael Eysenck and Mark Keane note that imaginings typically contain less detail than percepts - subjects describe them as similar to blurry photographs without clear boundaries.

„Phantasie ist sogar wichtiger als Wissen“. Warum? Weil das Wissen begrenzt ist, während die Vorstellungskraft die ganze Welt umfassen kann. Das mag eine weit hergeholte Schlussfolgerung sein, aber selbst wenn man die Probleme bedenkt, die der Einsatz von Vorstellungskraft manchmal verursachen kann, scheint es, dass die Vorteile die Risiken überwiegen. Abgesehen von der Verbesserung des Gedächtnisses, der Möglichkeit, verschiedene Fähigkeiten zu trainieren oder sich Ziele vorzustellen, die es zu erreichen gilt, ist der wichtigste Nutzen der Vorstellungskraft die Möglichkeit, aus dem Alltag auszubrechen in eine Welt, die du ganz nach deiner Idee gestalten kannst, vielleicht zusammen mit dem geliebten Menschen, den du zu Beginn so klar und deutlich gesehen hast.

Albert Einstein

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