Negative experiences and traumas do not end once the situation improves. They often haunt the victims for years and become root causes of many relationship and health-related problems. Imagery Rescripting is a therapeutic method that helps patients with processing negative experiences by rewriting scripts of past experiences. During a lecture at SWPS University in Poznań, Professor Arnoud Arntz from the University of Amsterdam, clinical psychologist specializing in trauma and personality disorders therapy, will talk about the use of Imagery Rescripting in the treatment of various psychological disorders.
The lecture will be delivered in English. Free admission. Registration required.
Imagery Rescripting as Transdiagnostic Treatment Technique
Imagery Rescripting (ImRs) is an experiential method to process memories of negative experiences that lie at the root of many patients’ problems, even if patients are not aware of this relationship.
In Imagery Rescripting, patients imagine the original experience, but alter the sequence of events so that their needs are better met. With very complex cases and early trauma’s, the focus is on memories from childhood and it is usually the therapist leading the Rescripting and the therapist who intervenes in fantasy to stop abuse, brings safety, and corrects misconceptions about the experience, whilst the patient imagines being the child. With less complex cases and in adult trauma/negative experiences, it is usually the patient who leads the rescripting.
ImRs has a wide range of applications, from PTSD, chronic depression, treatment-resistant anxiety and eating disorders to personality disorders. Moreover, it is a standard treatment of nightmares. With patients suffering from visual intrusions the application is quite straightforward as the intrusions, or the memories that they are based on, can be directly addressed in Imagery Rescripting. However with other problems, like a negative self-view or distrust in others, first memories of experiences that underlie such basic schemas need to be found. Usually the use of an ‘affect bridge’ between a recent experience of activation of the schema and a spontaneous early memory helps, and applications of this in a wide range of clinical problems have been found to be effective.
Imagery Rescripting has a number of attractive elements, including its broad and flexible range of application, its focus on changing the meaning of the experience, and the fact that it is not necessary to relive the whole trauma in all its details (which increases acceptability and usefulness for very severe case). In this lecture the clinical effectiveness of ImRs will be discussed, as well as laboratory studies into basic mechanisms that underlie ImRs, indicating that ImRs indeed works thru meaningful change.
Speaker
Arnoud Arntz – Professor of Clinical Psychology and chair of the Department of Psychology at the University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands. His main research interests include PTSD and personality disorders, both applied and fundamental. He is also practicing therapist at PsyQ in Amsterdam, where he treats patients with trauma and personality disorders. He is a former editor of the Journal of Behavior Therapy and Experimental Psychiatry.
Date and Location
April 2, 2020, 17:00-18:00
SWPS University of Social Sciences and Humanities
gen. Tadeusza Kutrzeby 10, 61-719 Poznań, room no. A001
Contact
Anna Szulczewska
e-mail: wydarzenia.poznan@swps.edu.pl
tel: +48 785 643 688
Following the regulation of the Ministry of Science and Higher Education and to ensure the safety of general public due to the COVID-19 outbreak, we have made a decision to cancel all educational events and lectures open to general public, until Aprl 13, 2020 inclusive.
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