Subliminal stimulation of symbiotic fantasies as an aid in the treatment of drug abusers.

Forty-seven heroin addicts being treated at the New York VA Methadone Clinic were divided into an experimental and a control group. In addition to the regular methadone treatment program, both groups received subliminal exposures to a verbal message for 24 sessions (4 times a week for 6 weeks). The messages were MOMMY AND I ARE ONE (experimental) and PEOPLE ARE WALKING (control), administered under double-blind conditions. In keeping with the main hypothesis, the experimental subjects, when compared with controls, showed a greater decrease in their use of heroin and other illicit drugs during the postintervention period. Additionally, on a follow-up questionnaire, the experimental subjects reported being more in control of their drug habits and more effective in their work than did those in the control group. Also, analysis of the patients' reported dreams revealed that the experimental group had more dreams containing positive interactions with a significant woman or son than did the control group.

Effects of stimulating psychodynamically relevant unconscious fantasies on schizophrenic psychopathology.

This article reviews a series of studies investigating the relationship between various unconscious fantasies and manifest pathology in adult schizophrenics. The results support the view that the activation of specific fantasies can lead to both the exacerbation and amelioration of symptoms in schizophrenia. The theoretical and clinical implications of the experimental findings are discussed, and suggestions for further research are offered.

Unconscious symbiotic fantasy: a ubiquitous therapeutic agent.

Evidence is presented that supports the proposition that the deliberate or inadvertent activation of unconscious fantasies of symbiotic gratification can have an ameliorative effect on psychopathology of various kinds. The evidence includes (1) clinically based reports scattered in the psychoanalytic literature on the role of symbiotic gratification in everyday living, in nonanalytic therapies viewed as effecting transference improvements, in meditation, in group activity therapies, and in psychoanalytic treatment, and (2) data from a large number of laboratory experiments coonducted with double-blind procedures and other stringent investigatory controls. In addition to providing powerful support for the clinically derived proposition, the laboratory results allow for extending that proposition and for a more precise delineation of the fantasy that produces symptom amelioration, which when expressed in its verbal form, is most often conveyed by the words Mommy and I are one.

A clinical application of subliminal psychodynamic activation. On the stimulation of symbiotic fantasies as an adjunct in the treatment of hospitalized schizophrenics.

This study attempted to utilize the subliminal psychodynamic activation method as an aid in the treatment of hospitalized schizophrenics. More specifically, we inbestigated whether the subliminal activation of a fantasy of symbiotic gratification would produce an increment in the degree of improvement that schizophrenics manifested as a result of hospitalization. Forty male patients were seen individually for three weekly sessions over a 6-week period for a fantasy expression task carried out by a psychology graduate student. Both at the beginning and at the end of each session and whenever during the session anxiety was in evidence, the patient was exposed to subliminal stimulation. The patients were divided into two groups equated for intelligence, pathology level, and other pertinent variables. For one group, the tachistoscopically presented stimulus consisted of MOMMY AND I ARE ONE, a verbal message which, in several prior studies, produced a significant reduction in ego impairment within a laboratory session. The other group served as a control, and their stimulus was PEOPLE ARE WALKING. The subjects in each group were subdivided in order to investigate the effects of two other interventions in addition to the subliminal symbiotic stimulation. One of these was aggressive expression consisting of an attempt to elicit specifically aggressive fantasies in the fantasy expression task. The other was self-focuing, designed to strengthen self-boundaries. All patients were blindly assessed for seven measures of ego impairment before and after the intervention period and for the number of rehospitalizations over a 9-month follow-up period. Of the three types of interventions impairment measures. For on of the variables, the symbiotic group showed significantly more improvement than the control group, while for two others the results approached significance. In addition, on an overall measure of ego impairment, there was significantly mor improvement for the symbiotic group than for the control patients.