Training · For clinicians
Training and supervision in Imaginal Immersion Therapy.
For psychologists and psychotherapists who want to use imagination, narrative and role-play with clinical grounding — not as a loose technique.
The aim is not to hand out ready-made formulas, but foundations, clinical language and technical judgement, so each professional can use these resources ethically, sensitively and with technical orientation.
§ 01 — The starting point
This is not about using games in therapy.
Three different things are commonly conflated. Format gathers characters, settings, rules and role-play. Engagement is interest and attachment to the narrative. The therapeutic process is what actually needs to change.
Gamification, with points and rewards, operates at the surface. IIT works at the third level: identifying what, inside a structured imaginative experience, can evoke, make observable and modify whatever effectively maintains the suffering.
That distinction is what separates an interesting session from a clinical one — and it is what the training teaches you to sustain.
§ 02 — Method
The clinical sequence.
Every scene originates in a case formulation. The model is situated within cognitive-behavioural and process-based therapy, drawing on mental imagery, imagery rescripting, behavioural experiments, exposure, chairwork and role-play research.
01
Case formulation
Identify the process that sustains the suffering — the rigid belief, the avoidance pattern, the difficulty regulating emotion. Nothing starts before this.
02
Functional reconstruction
Build a fictional situation that preserves the same functional relationship while changing the surface content.
03
Therapeutic simulation
Observe how the person interprets, feels and acts inside the scene. Thought stops being reported and starts operating as cognition in situation.
04
Process-matched intervention
Apply clinical resources to modify the response while it is happening, rather than afterwards in conversation about it.
05
Transfer
Translate what emerged in the narrative into concrete everyday action. Transfer to real-world behaviour is where the work is verified.
§ 03 — What the training builds
Five practical competencies.
The goal is not to memorise scenarios, but to be able to build your own from the case in front of you.
- 01
Derive the scene from the formulation
Build situations that test the target process, not merely entertain
- 02
Read what surfaces in action
Tell format, engagement and therapeutic process apart during session
- 03
Intervene inside the scene
Use clinical resources at the moment the pattern shows itself
- 04
Calibrate symbolic distance
Approach difficult content without literal autobiographical reproduction
- 05
Close the loop in daily life
Turn what was lived in the narrative into testable behaviour outside it
§ 04 — Formats
Three ways of working together.
Courses and training
Theoretical foundations and method of Imaginal Immersion Therapy, focused on how to build, run and close clinically oriented scenes.
Clinical supervision
Case supervision where imagination, narrative or role-play enter as a resource, with attention to formulation and to the criteria for their use.
Talks and seminars
Presentations on imagination, narrative and gamification in psychotherapy for institutions, psychology programmes and professional events.
§ 05 — Where the model stands
What is still to be proven.
Imaginal Immersion Therapy is an early-stage clinical model whose proposed components and processes require direct empirical evaluation. This is stated here on purpose: anyone training in it should know what is consolidated and what is still a working hypothesis.
The model's contribution is a testable method for using fictional role-play as an intermediate context between verbal processing, imagery, rehearsal and everyday action — with transfer to real-world behaviour as an explicit empirical requirement, not a promise.
“Exploring new forms of intervention without losing sight of the singularity of each case.”
§ 06 — Who runs it
Dr. Manoel Acioli
Clinical psychologist, MSc, PhD and post-doc in Psychology at the Federal University of Pernambuco, with post-doctoral research in international cooperation with Aix-Marseille Université and Université Lumière Lyon 2. Lecturer and clinical supervisor, director of RPG Terapia and co-founder of Ganimeds HealthTech.
CRP 06/234088
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Tell me where in your practice this would fit.
Cohorts, formats and supervision are arranged around each professional's moment and context. The shortest path is a conversation.