ABSTRACT

Imagery has been a component of epistemologies since philosophy evolved in Greece some 3000 years ago. Indeed, images were often the mental elements of prescientific psychologies. More recently, when the first laboratories devoted to the study of mental processes appeared, images remained a major focus of concern. In fact, a dominant controversy of the first three decades of the fledgling science concerned the role of mental images. For example, the focus of the debate between the University of Leipzig and Wurzburg University concerned the need for images in thinking—the former argued that images were essential, while the latter said they were not. The result of this and similar debates was a crisis in imagery theories during the early part of this decade. The crisis was primarily the result of the introspective methodology adopted by the first psychological laboratories. The introspective training that the subjects received predetermined the kinds of images they described, or whether they reported images at all. Such a fragile data base was bound to create theoretical problems. The arguments between the various schools became heated but nonproductive. It is only a slight exaggeration to state that little was learned about psychological phenomena (other than perception) during this period. The frustration of a young group of American psychologists was understandable. They rejected introspection and the mentalistic theories it produced, demanding a new method which would yield objective, replicable results. This methodologically-caused crisis brought about a new definition of the discipline, and North American psychology became Behaviorism. 1 One casualty of the behaviorist revolution was imagery, as it was rejected along with all mentalisitc concepts. Imagery virtually disappeared from research and theories in North America for over 40 years.