Imagination And Psychiatry

Imagination and Psychiatry A Tract Book Essay By Anthony J. Fejfar, Esq., Coif © Copyright 2007 by Anthony J. Fejfar

I have a very good imagination. In my mind’s eye I can imagine an internal motion picture of myself catching a trout in a stream. I can imagine the numbers 2+2=4 in my imagination. I can imagine a song played by a band in my imagination. When I read a novel, I can imagine the scene described in the novel as if was really happening. Finally, I can imagine a conversation taking place in my imagination between two persons, seemingly acting independently of each other. I point all of this out to you because I have heard that there are some persons, most notably psychiatrists, who do not believe that the imagination exists. Because they do not believe in the imagination, it is impossible for these psychiatrists to see that a normal, mentally healthy individual can “hear a voice” in his or her imagination, just as one can hear a conversation in the imagination. It is wrong for a psychiatrist to diagnose psychosis where the mental activity taking place, takes place in the internal

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imagination of the mind.

I think the problem is that some psychiatrists do

not have an imagination themselves. Perhaps the imagination is a gift which only creative artists have, so that the mundane psychiatrist is excluded. Unfortunately, the mundane psychiatrist, instead of noticing his or her deficiency, prefers instead to find that the normal person with an artistic imagination is abnormal. This must stop. This is malpractice.

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