Images have always captured our imagination, since the beginnings of
recorded history. The ancient Greeks wrote numerous accounts of the
"inner perceptions of the world" in their philosophical writings. These
images were thought of as impressions of past experience, like drawings on
a wax tablet. Even more revealing is the fact that the roots of Freudian
dream imagry analysis can be traced as far back as the Hellenic scholars,
who put great significance on memory images - both the traces embedded in
dreams, and in of themselves.
(Holt: p.254)
From the middle ages through to the late renaissance, mental imagery was
used as a device for the task of mass memorization. Particularly within
the circles of the clergy, vivid images were used in memorizing the
Bible. Then, and now, visual imagery served as key for the construction
of memory palaces, which have found a new home in the world of a different
kind of programmable memory: the web, now complete with virtual memory
palaces.
The academic interest in mental imagery has fluctuated for hundreds of
years - cycling through stages of scientific inquiry including
"introspective reports" at the turn of the century, to a behaviorist
backlash that stressed not only the importance, but the dominence of
language in thinking. Dream analysis continued, but usually under
hypnosis in "the theraputic hour", and these studies were not related to
the larger theortical debates of the time. A resurgence in interest in
visual thinking occurred with the gestalt movement - which turned the
behaviorist theories on its head, and stressed the subordination of
language to the visual, particularly in terms of interior dialogue.
Slowly, but surely, the visual is gaining acceptance once again, and many
studies focusing on everything from the study of creativity as a visual
process to neurophysiological investigations of verbal and imaginal
processes are being undertaken.
(John-Steiner:
p.84)
