(2016) Science and education, 5, 256-261,  Odessa.

Tetiana Shapran,
фssistant of the Department of Social and Practical Psychology,
Zhytomyr State University named after Ivan Franko,
40, Velyka Berdychivska Str., Zhytomyr, Ukraine

USE OF THE CATATHYMIC AND IMAGINATIVE METHOD
IN DEALING WITH INTERNAL CONFLICTS IN ADOLESCENCE

The article is aimed at substantiating the appropriateness of using the catathymic and imaginative method of dealing with inner conflicts of adolescents. The catathymic and imaginative method or guided affective imagery (or symboldrama) is based on the principles of depth psychology, which uses the special method of working with imagination for visualisation of person’s unconscious fantasies, desires, and conflicts. It involves free dreaming in the form of imaginations on the topic proposed by a psychologist. The study involved 9 students-adolescents (4 male and 5 female students). All the respondents had inner conflicts associated with their parents. The experiment was carried out in three stages. The first one was aimed at revealing the essence of the personal ideas about the inner conflicts by the students by means of Semantic differential method by C. Osgood. The second one involved the use of catathymic and imaginative method in order to deal with the respondents’ inner conflicts connected with their mothers. At the third stage, the method of C. Osgood was used again in order to assess the changes of the respondents’ respond to the inner conflicts. The research results have shown that the majority of the adolescents demonstrated low indices of the “assessment” factor for the most of the proposed stimuli at the first stage of the experiment. It is associated with the respondents’ poor ability to differentiate their emotional states. At the third stage after consideration of the inner conflicts by means of  guided affective imagery according to all stimuli, the indices of factors “assessment” have increased. Thus, the research results prove the expediency of the catathymic and imaginative method of dealing with inner conflicts of adolescents. The prospects of the further studies involve revealing the gender peculiarities of adolescents’ inner conflicts

intrapersonal conflict, adolescence, catathymic and imaginative method, symboldrama, motive, method of semantic differential.

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