Frederick Melges' (1982) work on self-futuring helps us incorporate the notion of imagination into a discussion of hope. Futuring, for Melges, is the process of visualizing future possibilities. A person's view of the future is constructed from the interaction of images, plans, and emotions. Emotions control images, images control plans, and incongruities between images and plans control emotions. For Melges, individuals attempt to gain control over their futures through the factors of futuring, temporal organization, and emotion. Normally, there is a synchronized interaction between these. Within an emotional context, images of the future are brought into the present and plans of action are generated to meet the evolving images.
In cases of depression the future seems blocked, most often either by hopelessness or grief. In cases of hopelessness, the individual considers his or her plans or actions ineffective for reaching future goals. Reasons include inability to carry out plans of action, perfectionistic or unrealistic goals, or both. Moreover, depressed patients often neglect the present and remain preoccupied with future goals, even when they appear futile. This prompts patients to give up striving, rendering a foreshortened and constricted future time perspective. Even though individuals believe that their plans of action will render them incapable of reaching their goals, they cease striving rather than switch to other alternatives.
While the person predisposed to hopelessness has a narrow view of the personal future, we have seen that hope entails maintaining an overall positive attitude toward the personal future. Explains Melges: "Thus, with hope, the personal future is not certain and fixed but is viewed as being open, unfrozen, and full of opportunities" (p. 178). The primary task for treating the hopelessness of depression is thus to "unfreeze the future."
Future-oriented therapy is designed to interrupt and prevent emotional vicious cycles by helping patients to become self-directed toward their own future choices,
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versus being unduly swayed by others or the past. The main methods consist of using visual imagery to create a realistic future self-image and incorporating time projection for integrating plans of action with the future self-image. As Melges states, "FOR therapy helps patients crystallize their identities as well as what to do next and how to go about it. Emphasis is placed on what the person is striving for" (p. 240).
Future-oriented psychotherapy encourages individuals to make choices concerning the kind of people they want to become and to animate these choices through visual images that are time-projected into the future. Use of visual images facilitates change primarily by right brain function, and patients who benefit most from FOR therapy are those who can readily produce visual images. The chosen future self-image serves both as a shield against catastrophic expectations from the past and as an internal guide to explore new opportunities for personal growth.
Self-futuring involves helping the patient bring anticipated scenes of her/his personal future into the psychological present in order to make changes about the becoming self. The aim is to help the patient construct a nurturing and realistic ego-ideal with the goal of maintaining identity regardless of expectations of others in past, present, or future. States Melges: "Through creating a unique synthesis of personal choices, the patient is prompted to establish a core identity that will thwart downward spirals and hopefully instill upward spirals" (p. 252).
For example, individuals are asked to time-project a day approximately three months in advance (e.g., a holiday) using guided imagery. The patient may need to "redecision" past scripts so as not to repeat them. By instilling movement and emotion into visual scenes, a feeling of duration - of time unfolding - is created. Once a choice is worked out, the individual should practice evoking images daily that are congruent with that choice.
To establish a link with the past, the individual is invited to awaken his/ her "free child" and to link these positive experiences of the past with his/her future self-image. The linkage can be facilitated by metaphors. As well, cues in the present environment are used to remind the person of his/her chosen future images. Colors, clock times, or forms of self-stroking can be cues. Temporal role playing, future autobiography, and psychodrama of the future also can be used. For example, Melges describes a client who wished to become more self-assured. When she remembered ice skating as a child, she had a feeling of liberation. Melges encouraged her to imagine ice skating as a metaphor for self-assurance. In a time-projected future date, she pictured herself wearing invisible ice skates to remind herself of this goal.
From Melges, we can see that hope is linked not only to goal-directed behavior and left brain activity, but also to imagination and right brain activity. In what follows I further explore the role of imagination in healing. Religious texts frequently make use of imagination and fantasy; moreover, myth and story are increasingly being acknowledged as having important roles in a therapeutic context.
