Facilitating guided imagery and music: What therapists intend, experience, and do

The published literature on the Bonny Method of Guided Imagery and Music (BMGIM) provides revealing but inconsistent descriptions of therapists' experiences during BMGIM sessions. In order to learn more about them, six therapists were videotaped while guiding a client through a BMGIM session. They were then interviewed about their moment-to-moment actions, experiences, and rationales or intentions for their actions and experiences, while they watched the videotape. Transcripts of the interviews were worked into narratives, which were then analyzed using phenomenological research techniques. Thematic experiences, actions, and rationales or intentions for the experiences and actions, were identified. The themes were interrogated to create descriptions of the interplays of action and experience in which the therapists were involved relative to their clinical intentions. The findings of the study provide a basis for understanding the ways in which the therapists used experience and intention to inform their actions, as well as ways in which they used their actions, intentions, and experiences to manage their consciousness during a BMGIM session. They also reveal that the therapists' clinical intentions gave form and purpose to, but did not define, the client's therapeutic work. It was concluded that the therapists' clinical intentions were key to their skillful use of their experiences and actions to guide a client through a BMGIM session.