ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the relationship between Jung’s concept of “image,” which is a core construct in the Jungian interpretation of psychic processes, and the modern cognitive notion of mental images as constituting a central step in information processing. Cognitive studies, as well as some neuroscience hypotheses about the brain’s different modes of processing sensorial and emotional information, seem to confirm the Jungian hypothesis that images are the main content of our thoughts and that thinking itself has its roots in imaging. This acquisition may support the Jungian clinical perspective in the light of Wilma Bucci’s theory, where psychoanalytic and cognitive constructs are used together to build a model of the analytically oriented therapeutic process. Referring to this model can open further reflections about the effectiveness or the failures of the analytical work, in order to obtain clinical significant changes for the patient’s psychological health.
