Phobic imagery is used extensively in the treatment of phobic disorders by psychological means. The physiological and subjective accompaniments of such imagery are thus of some importance for both treatment and assessment. An earlier report (Marks et al. , 1971a) described a standardized method of assessment of phobic imagery and results in one trial of 16 phobic patients. To date the method has been used in the assessment of 77 phobic patients before and after treatment in 6 different studies. This report summarizes our experience with it and its sensitivity to clinical changes. The main finding was that subjective report was a more consistent discriminator between phobic and neutral images than were measures of heart rate or skin conductance. Nevertheless physiological measures were often useful indicators of clinical changes.
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Marks et al. (1973) studied this question.