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16 - Emotional Mental Imagery

from Part II - Imagery-Based Forms of the Imagination

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 May 2020

By
Simon E. Blackwell
Edited by
Anna Abraham
Anna Abraham
Affiliation:
University of Georgia
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Summary

The experience of mental imagery is a common part of everyday life for most people, and much of this mental imagery has an emotional tone. For example, we may enjoy anticipating an upcoming holiday in our imagination, or an unpleasant image we saw on the television the previous evening may suddenly flash into our mind and bring with it a feeling of sadness or disgust. Scientific research into mental imagery has demonstrated its capacity to evoke emotion, and this is likely to play a role in the important functions that mental imagery appears to have in everyday life. However, the experience of emotional mental imagery is not always helpful, and dysfunctions in emotional mental imagery are observed across a range of areas of mental health, such as depression and anxiety disorders. At the same time, the properties of emotional mental imagery can be deliberately harnessed, for example in psychological therapies. The research presented in this chapter highlights the importance of being aware of the capacity of mental imagery to evoke emotion and the properties of emotional mental imagery when studying the imagination, and raises a number of suggestions for furthering interdisciplinary research in this area.

Keywords

Mental imagerymental time travelmemoryemotionepisodic simulation
Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge Handbook of the Imagination , pp. 241 - 257
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2020

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