Of madness or play?: The relation of archaic thought forms in waking images to psychopathology and characteristic regressive potential.

Abstract

Visual images produced by 116 normal undergraduates in a state of relaxed wakefulness were studied in relation to two subject variables: psychopathology and regressive potential. Ss each formed a sequence of six images, which were rated for specific phenomenological features: bizarreness, transformations, and vividness. Psychopathology was assessed from responses to the Quality of Life, a questionnaire on the individual's satisfactions and dissatisfactions in ten life areas. Regressive potential was measured by a new questionnaire which taps a wide array of psychological domains in which adaptive or maladaptive regression may occur. There were four main hypotheses. First, it was predicted that there would be a main effect for regressive potential on the extent of the three image factors. This was confirmed. Second, a main effect for psychopathology on the three image factors was expected. This also was confirmed. Thus, high regressive potential and high psychopathology (relative to the sample) both corresponded to the extent of archaic forms in Ss' images. regressive potential showed the stronger statistical relation, however, and held for each of the three image factors, whereas psychopathology was specific to just bizarreness. The third hypothesis predicted an interaction effect for the two subject variables. This failed to be confirmed. The fourth hypothesis predicted a sequence effect, with progressive desynthesis of thought as imaging proceeds. Results failed to support this, instead showing idiosyncratic patterns across image sequences. The scales developed to measure the image factors were employed to establish a morphology of primitive image forms. The three factors and their discrete subtypes were found to pervade waking imagery. Their relations with each other and with the subject factors were tested. The main conclusion is that regressive thought forms in visual images are fundamentally a part of normal waking cognition. Findings are discussed in terms of the role of the ego, and the tradition of attributing archaic imagery to the primary process. The nature of visual cognition, and the possibility of identifying an imagistic thought disorder are discussed. Qualitative observations are described which point to the experience of phosphenes, and to the possibility that certain types of bizarreness reflect fault lines in normal percept microgenesis.