Usefulness of emotive imagery in the treatment of childhood phobias: Clinical guidelines,case examples and issues

Emotive imagery is a variant of systematic desensitization that has been developed for use in the treatment of children's excessive fears. We outline clinical guidelines for the use of emotive imagery and present several case examples. Although emotive imagery appears to be useful and cost efficient, controlled studies are needed to establish the efficacy of emotive imagery and explore the active treatment ingredients or mechanism.