Studies have shown that mental imagery is necessary for proper mental functioning. This dissertation critically analyses the history and perceived significance of mental imagery as a psychotherapeutic tool in counselling in both the United States and Great Britain. The different routes the two countries have taken in phenomenological and behavioural schools of psychology are also examined. Teachers of counselling in the United States and Great Britain are then surveyed in order to compare the perceived significance mental imagery has as a therapeutic tool in each country. There is no other research to date which has worked with this data. The results suggest that due to the emphasis on behaviour therapy in the United States, although mental imagery is utilized in other historically significant psychologicaltherapies, it is only referred to in the United States with reference to behavioural approaches. The most notable approach being "systematic d e sensitization" . Because of this, the perceived significance of mental imagery as a psychotherapeutic tool is high among American counselling professionals only when linked to behavior therapy.Consequently, the perceived significance of mental imagery as a psychotherapeutic tool is lower when considering any other therapies outside of behaviourism. The results further suggest that counselling professionals in Great Britain havea higher perceived significance of mental imagery as a psychotherapeutic tool. A reason forth is may be because most counsellors in Great Britain are trained at institutes which often focus on particular theories rather than all of thehistorically significant ones. Further, Great Britain psychologists never rebuked the concept of mental imagery as psychologists did in America at the advent of behaviourism and "scientific thought" during the World Wars. Moreover, behaviourism, which initially rejected mental imagery, was not as widely appreciated in Great Britain during that time. Therefore, the mental image was still accepted as credible in the British psychological community. The outcome of the survey suggests that in America the growth of mental imagery as a psychotherapeutic tool isinhibited by the lack of references to mental imagery usage with in historically significant therapies. I f the study of these therapies among American counselling students is to continue, a systematic examination on mental imagery usage could heighten the perceived significance among American practitioners. This, in turn, could pave the way for the emergence of more imagery methods in American psychologicalcounselling

Eighty four female undergraduate students participated in a psychotherapy analog study to determine the effects of imagery ability, guided imagery therapy treatments, and personal versus supplied constructs upon self-disclosure variables in a 2 x 3 x 2 Anova design, with repeated measures on the final factor. Dependent variables were measured by reaction time, total talk time, speech duration, silence quotient, and Doster's (1971) Self-Disclosure Rating Scale. Subjects were divided into two imagery ability levels on the basis of local mean scores on Sheehan's (1967) modification of Betts' (1909) Questionnaire upon Mental Imagery. Three treatment procedures were employed: a guided focal imagery treatment, which encouraged imagery involving the interpersonal topics to be discussed, a guided relaxation imagery treatment which used standard sensory relaxation scenes, and a treatment which imparted ambiguous instructions. The final factor was repeated measures of the eight negative topics the subjects were asked to discuss. Four were chosen from the subjects' Role Construct Repertory Test grid (Kelly, 1955; Landfield, 1971), and four were selected from the Semantic Differential (Snider & Osgood, 1969).

Measures of pain tolerance and threshold were obtained for 100 male and female subjects in a pretest treatment posttest experiment using the cold pressor test. Subjects were divided into five treatment groups with an equal representation of males and females in each group. In addition each group was divided into high and low locus of control, resulting in a 2 X 5, locus of control-by—treatment, experimental design. Treatment groups received one of the following five sets of instructions: prescribed pleasant imagery, prescribed angry imagery, self-generated pleasant imagery, self-generated angry imagery, and expectancy control. Credibility checks were obtained on all groups, and an ANOVA revealed no significant differences in credibility ratings among the groups.