Videoinsight® art for care

The corporal and psychic dimensions are deeply combined and reciprocally conditioned in the body unit. The improvement of psychological status influences the somatic one. The role that psychology has to play in understanding and improving the recovery after mental or physical stress is really interesting and needs more attention in order to treat the patient as a global unit and not focusing on a single aspect of mental or physical recovery only, in order to promote patient global wellness. The Videoinsight® is a psychological enhancing method that involves the vision of contemporary art videos, selected according to their content and transformative potential, with the intent to catalyze the “insight” psychological experience and to facilitate the process that allows the individual to stimulate sensations, emotions, learning, psycho-aptitude orientation, actions and changes. Insight in psychoanalysis means the capacity to understand the interior psychic pathway and consequently to allow therapeutic transformation. These artistic videos contain a significant psycho-diagnostic and psychotherapeutic meaning that can help treat the psychological and psychosomatic disabilities that are frequently observed after mental or corporal stress, increasing the resistance capacity and improving the cognitive and behavioral power during the recovery process. The Videoinsight® Method has been verified in the clinical, psychological and medical setting: • for the Diagnosis of the Structure and Operation of Personality: the art video reveals similarities with the Projective Rorschach Test; • for the Analysis of Request for Psychological Support and for the Discovery of the Capacity of Trust, Cooperation, and Motivation in the relationship with the Others; • for the Prevention of Psychological Discomfort related to the Crisis of Development (adolescent, post traumatic stress, psychosomatic stress and the one related to physical illness and the aging process); • for the Orientation and Enabling of Attitudes and Functional Talents in support of the healthy personality. They are critical for containment of the weak and dysfunctional parts, supporting a creative and harmonious mental and physical development of the person; • for the Rehabilitation of Psychological Resources following the impairment caused by a physical illness, a trauma, a stress that turns the vulnerability into crisis or into evolutionary stalemate. In particular, in two prospective randomized studies, the Videoinsight® Method was able to accelerate recovery after Anterior Cruciate Ligament reconstruction and also after Total Knee Arthroplasty with improvement of subjective functional score and psychological scales. These results highlight how images are powerful and have a tremendous impact on the personality. Specific images can be very powerful and are able to produce “insight." In this chapter we will describe the Videoinsight® Method and its applications in the psychotherapeutic setting, in distress prevention and in promoting well-being and early recovery during rehabilitation following surgery.