Active imagination

Last updated September 23, 2024

Active imagination refers to a process or technique of engaging with the ideas or imaginings of one's mind. It is used as a mental strategy to communicate with the subconscious mind. In Jungian psychology, it is a method for bridging the conscious and unconscious minds. Instead of being linked to the Jungian process, the phrase "active imagination" in modern psychology is most frequently used to describe a propensity to have a very creative and present imagination. It is thought to be a crucial aid in the process of individuation.

European tradition

The theosophy of post-Renaissance Europe embraced imaginal cognition. From Jakob Böhme to Swedenborg, active imagination played a large role in theosophical works. In this tradition, the active imagination serves as an "organ of the soul, thanks to which humanity can establish a cognitive and visionary relationship with an intermediate world".^[1]

Samuel Taylor Coleridge, an English philosopher, made a distinction between imagination expressing realities of an imaginal realm above our mundane personal existence and "fancy", or fantasy, which represents the creativity of the artistic soul. For him, "imagination is the condition for cognitive (conscious?) participation in a sacramental universe".^[2]

Carl Gustav Jung

As developed by Carl Jung between 1913 and 1916,^[3] active imagination is a meditation technique wherein the contents of one's unconscious are translated into images, narratives, or personified as separate entities. It can serve as a bridge between the conscious "ego" and the unconscious. This often includes working with dreams and the creative self via imagination or fantasy. Jung linked active imagination with the processes of alchemy. Both strive for oneness and inter-relatedness from a set of fragmented and dissociated parts. This process found expression for Jung in his Red Book .

The key to active imagination is restraining the conscious waking mind from exerting influence on internal images as they unfold. For example, if a person were recording a spoken visualization of a scene or object from a dream, Jung's approach would ask the practitioner to observe the scene, watch for changes, and report them, rather than consciously filling the stage with one's desired changes. One would then respond genuinely to these changes and report any further changes in the scene. This approach ensures that the unconscious contents express themselves without undue influence from the conscious mind. At the same time, however, Jung was insistent that some form of active participation in active imagination was essential: "You yourself must enter into the process with your personal reactions: ... as if the drama being enacted before your eyes were real".^[4]

Of the origin of active imagination, Jung wrote:

It was during Advent of the year 1913 – December 12, to be exact – I resolved upon the decisive step. I was sitting at my desk once more, thinking over my fears. Then I let myself drop. Suddenly it was as though the ground literally gave way beneath my feet, and I plunged into the dark depths.^[5]

Further describing his early personal experience with an active imagination, Jung describes how desires and fantasies of the unconscious mind naturally rise to become conscious. Once they are recognized-realized by the individual, dreams may become "weaker and less frequent," whereas they may have been quite vivid and recurring beforehand.^[6]

Jung's use of active imagination was one of several techniques defining his distinctive contribution to the practice of psychotherapy in the period 1912–1960. An active imagination is a method for visualizing unconscious issues by letting them act themselves out. Active imagination can be done by visualization (which is how Jung himself did it), which can be considered similar in technique to shamanic journeying. Active imagination can also be done by automatic writing or by artistic activities such as dance, music, painting, sculpting, ceramics, crafts, etc. Jung considered how, "The patient can make himself creatively independent through this method ... by painting himself he gives shape to himself".^[7] Doing active imagination permits the thoughtforms of the unconscious, or inner "self", and of the totality of the psyche, to act out whatever messages they are trying to communicate to the conscious mind.

For Jung, however, this technique had the potential to allow communication between the conscious and unconscious aspects of the personal psyche with its various components and inter-dynamics and between the personal and "collective" unconscious; and therefore was to be embarked upon with due care and attentiveness. Indeed, he warned with respect to "'active imagination' ... The method is not entirely without danger, because it may carry the patient too far away from reality".^[8] The post-Jungian Michael Fordham was to go further, suggesting that "active imagination, as a transitional phenomenon ... can be, and often is, both in adults and children put to nefarious purposes and promotes psychopathology. This probably takes place when the mother's impingements have distorted the 'cultural' elements in maturation, and therefore it becomes necessary to analyze childhood and infancy if the distortion is to be shown up."^[9]

In partial answer to this critique, James Hillman and Sonu Shamdasani discuss at length the dangers of viewing active imagination solely as an expression of personal content. They propose the technique is easily misunderstood and misdirected when applied to the strictly biographical and should never be used to bridge the personal with the dead. Instead, they suggest, active imagination in Jung's usage was an exposition of the unvoiced influences of the collective unconscious, shedding the terminology of psychology to work directly through mythic images:

SS: ... In reflecting on himself, he does not come across at rock bottom his own personal biography, but it's an attempt to uncover the quintessentially human. These dialogues are not dialogues with his past, as you're indicating [...] But with the weight of human history. [...] And this task of discrimination is what he spent the rest of his life engaged in. Yes, in some sense what happened to him was wholly particular but, in the other sense, it was universally human and that generates his project of the comparative study of the individuation process.^[10]

Active imagination removes or highlights traits and characteristics that are often present in the dream. Without a broader perspective, the person working with active imagination may start to see them as their traits.^[11] Thus in this continuing effort to stress the importance of what Maslow would come to call the transpersonal, much of Jung's later work was conceived as a comparative historical study of the active imagination and the individuation process in various cultures and epochs, conceived as a normative pattern of human development and the basis of general scientific psychology.

Rudolf Steiner

Rudolf Steiner suggested cultivating imaginative consciousness through meditative contemplation of texts, objects, or images. The resulting imaginal cognition he believed to be an initial step on a path leading from rational consciousness toward ever-deeper spiritual experience.^[12]^{: 302–311}

The steps following Imagination he termed Inspiration and Intuition. In Inspiration, a meditant clears away all personal content, including even the consciously chosen content of a symbolic form, while maintaining the activity of imagination itself, thus becoming able to perceive the imaginal realm from which this activity stems. In the next step, Intuition, the meditant leverages the connection to the imaginal or angelic realm established via the cognitive imagination while releasing the images mediated via this connection. By ceasing the activity of imaginative consciousness while allowing one's awareness to remain in contact with the archetypal realm, the possibility opens up for an awareness deeper than the imaginal to be conveyed to the open soul by the mediating agents of this realm.^[13]

Islamic tradition

In Islamic philosophy the imaginal realm is known as Alam al-Mithal. According to Avicenna, the imagination mediated between, and thus unified, human reason and divine being. This mediating quality manifested in two directions: on the one hand, reason, rising above itself, could attain to the level of active imagination, an activity shared with the lower divine beings. On the other hand, to manifest the concrete forms of the world, divinity created a range of intermediate beings, the angelic co-creators of the universe.^[14]^: 11 According to philosophers of this tradition, the trained imagination can access a "nonspatial fabric" which mediates between the empirical/sensory and the cognitional/spiritual realms.^[15]

Through Averroes, mainstream Islamic philosophy lost its relationship to the active imagination. The Sufi movement, as exemplified by Ibn Arabi, continued to explore contemplative approaches to the imaginal realm.^[14]

Henry Corbin

Henry Corbin considered imaginal cognition to be a "purely spiritual faculty independent of the physical organism and thus surviving it".^[16] Islamic philosophy in general, and Avicenna and Corbin in particular, distinguish sharply between the true imaginations that stem from the imaginal realm, and personal fantasies, which have a fictional character and are "imaginary" in the common sense of this word. Corbin termed the imagination, which transcended fantasy imaginatio vera.

Corbin suggested that by developing our imaginal perception, we can go beyond mere symbolic representations of archetypes to the point where "new senses perceive directly the order of [supersensible] reality".^[17]^: 81 To accomplish this passage from symbol to reality requires a "transmutation of the being and the spirit"^[18] Corbin describes the imaginal realm as "a precise order of reality, corresponding to a precise mode of perception", the "cognitive Imagination" (p. 1).^[19] He considered the imaginal realm to be identical with the realm of angels described in many religions, which manifests not only through imaginations but also in people's vocation and destiny.^[17]^: 96

Corbin (1964) suggests that it is by developing this faculty of cognitive imagination that we can overcome the "divorce between thinking and being" ^[19]^: 4

The imaginal concept was further developed in the Communication Sciences domain. Samuel Mateus (2013) suggested a close link between the imaginary, society, and publicity. The "public imaginal" was named after the dynamic, symbolic, and complex set of diverse and heterogeneous imaginaries that permeate societies.^[20]

Role in scientific and mathematical discovery

Hadamard (1954)^[21] and Châtelet (1991)^[22] suggest that imagination and conceptual experiment play central roles in mathematical creativity. Important scientific discoveries have been made through imaginative cognition, such as Kekulé's famous discovery of the carbon ring structure of benzene through a dream of a snake eating its tail. Other examples include Archimedes, in his bathtub, imagining that his body is nothing but a gourd of water and Einstein imagining himself to be a photon on a horizon of velocities. An example rarely spoken of is Descartes' three dreams, which led to his ideas of mathematics and philosophy, which influenced much of modern thinking.^{[ citation needed ]}

Related Research Articles

Carl Gustav Jung was a Swiss psychiatrist, psychotherapist, psychologist and pioneering evolutionary theorist who founded the school of analytical psychology. He was a prolific author, illustrator, and correspondent, and a complex and controversial character, perhaps best known through his "autobiography" Memories, Dreams, Reflections.

Collective unconscious refers to the unconscious mind and shared mental concepts. It is generally associated with idealism and was coined by Carl Jung. According to Jung, the human collective unconscious is populated by instincts, as well as by archetypes: ancient primal symbols such as The Great Mother, the Wise Old Man, the Shadow, the Tower, Water, and the Tree of Life. Jung considered the collective unconscious to underpin and surround the unconscious mind, distinguishing it from the personal unconscious of Freudian psychoanalysis. He believed that the concept of the collective unconscious helps to explain why similar themes occur in mythologies around the world. He argued that the collective unconscious had a profound influence on the lives of individuals, who lived out its symbols and clothed them in meaning through their experiences. The psychotherapeutic practice of analytical psychology revolves around examining the patient's relationship to the collective unconscious.

The principle of individuation, or principium individuationis, describes the manner in which a thing is identified as distinct from other things.

Analytical psychology is a term coined by Carl Jung, a Swiss psychiatrist, to describe research into his new "empirical science" of the psyche. It was designed to distinguish it from Freud's psychoanalytic theories as their seven-year collaboration on psychoanalysis was drawing to an end between 1912 and 1913. The evolution of his science is contained in his monumental opus, the Collected Works, written over sixty years of his lifetime.

In analytical psychology, the shadow is an unconscious aspect of the personality that does not correspond with the ego ideal, leading the ego to resist and project the shadow, creating conflict with it. The shadow may be personified as archetypes which relate to the collective unconscious, such as the trickster.

A complex is a structure in the unconscious that is objectified as an underlying theme—like a power or a status—by grouping clusters of emotions, memories, perceptions and wishes in response to a threat to the stability of the self. In psychoanalysis, it is antithetical to drives.

James Hillman was an American psychologist. He studied at, and then guided studies for, the C.G. Jung Institute in Zürich. He founded a movement toward archetypal psychology and retired into private practice, writing and traveling to lecture, until his death at his home in Connecticut.

Hidden personality is the part of the personality that is determined by unconscious processes.

The anima and animus are a syzygy of dualistic, Jungian archetypes among the array of other animistic parts within the Self in Jungian psychology, described in analytical psychology and archetypal psychology, under the umbrella of transpersonal psychology. The Jungian parts of the Self are a priori part of the infinite set of archetypes within the collective unconscious. Modern Jungian clinical theory under the analytical/archetypal-psych framework considers a syzygy-without-its-partner to be like yin without yang: countertransference reveals that logos and/or eros are in need of repair through a psychopomp, mediating the identified patient's Self; this theoretical model is similar to positive psychology's understanding of a well-tuned personality through something like a Goldilocks principle.

Depth psychology refers to the practice and research of the science of the unconscious, covering both psychoanalysis and psychology. It is also defined as the psychological theory that explores the relationship between the conscious and the unconscious, as well as the patterns and dynamics of motivation and the mind. The theories of Sigmund Freud, Carl Gustav Jung, and Alfred Adler are all considered its foundations.

The Self in Jungian psychology is a dynamic concept which has undergone numerous modifications since it was first conceptualised as one of the Jungian archetypes.

Archetypal psychology was initiated as a distinct movement in the early 1970s by James Hillman, a psychologist who trained in analytical psychology and became the first Director of the Jung Institute in Zürich. Hillman reports that archetypal psychology emerged partly from the Jungian tradition whilst drawing also from other traditions and authorities such as Henry Corbin, Giambattista Vico, and Plotinus.

The Jungian interpretation of religion, pioneered by Carl Jung and advanced by his followers, is an attempt to interpret religion in the light of Jungian psychology. Unlike Sigmund Freud and his followers, Jungians tend to treat religious beliefs and behaviors in a positive light, while offering psychological referents to traditional religious terms such as "soul", "evil", "transcendence", "the sacred", and "God". Because beliefs do not have to be facts in order for people to hold them, the Jungian interpretation of religion has been, and continues to be, of interest to psychologists and theists.

<i>Two Essays on Analytical Psychology</i>

Two Essays on Analytical Psychology is volume 7 of The Collected Works of C. G. Jung, presenting the core of Carl Jung's views about psychology. Known as one of the best introductions to Jung's work, the volumes includes the essays "The Relations between the Ego and the Unconscious" and "On the Psychology of the Unconscious" (1943).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Imagination</span> Creative ability

Imagination is the production of sensations, feelings and thoughts informing oneself. These experiences can be re-creations of past experiences, such as vivid memories with imagined changes, or completely invented and possibly fantastic scenes. Imagination helps apply knowledge to solve problems and is fundamental to integrating experience and the learning process.

Jungian archetypes are a concept from psychology that refers to a universal, inherited idea, pattern of thought, or image that is present in the collective unconscious of all human beings. The psychic counterpart of instinct, archetypes are thought to be the basis of many of the common themes and symbols that appear in stories, myths, and dreams across different cultures and societies. Some examples of archetypes include those of the mother, the child, the trickster, and the flood, among others. The concept of the collective unconscious was first proposed by Carl Jung, a Swiss psychiatrist and psychoanalyst.

The Philemon Foundation is a non-profit organization that exists to prepare for publication the Complete Works of Carl Gustav Jung, beginning with the previously unpublished manuscripts, seminars and correspondences. It is estimated that an additional 30 volumes of work will be published and that the work will take three decades to complete.

Archetypal pedagogy is a theory of education developed by Clifford Mayes that aims at enhancing psycho-spiritual growth in both the teacher and student. The idea of archetypal pedagogy stems from the Jungian tradition and is directly related to analytical psychology.

The theories of Carl Jung are grounded in his evolutionary conception of human brain evolution. This had led to a resurgence of research into his work, beginning in the early 2000s, from the perspective of contemporary neuroscience. Much of this work looks at Jung's theories of a genetically inherited 'collective unconscious' common to all of humankind. This hypothesis was postulated by Jung in his efforts to account for similar patterns of behaviour and symbolic expression in myth, dream imagery and religion in various cultures around the world. Jung believed that the 'collective unconscious' was structured by archetypes - that is species typical patterns of behaviour and cognition common to all humans. Contemporary researchers have postulated such recurrent archetypes reside in 'environmentally closed' subcortical brain systems that evolved in the human lineage prior to the emergence of self-consciousness and the uniquely human self-reflective ego.

Dream psychology is a scientific research field in psychology. In analytical psychology, as in psychoanalysis generally, dreams are "the royal road" to understanding unconscious content.

References

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↑ Gregory, A. P. R. (2003). Coleridge and the conservative imagination. Mercer University Press. p. 59
↑ Hoerni, Ulrich; Fischer, Thomas; Kaufmann, Bettina, eds. (2019). The Art of C.G. Jung. W. W. Norton & Company. p. 260. ISBN 978-0-393-25487-7.
↑ Jung, quoted in Anthony Stevens, Jung (Oxford 1994) p. 109
↑ Jung, Carl. Memories, Dreams, Reflections (1961) Random House ISBN 0-87773-554-9
↑ DAVIDSON, D. (1966), Transference as a Form of Active Imagination. Journal of Analytical Psychology, 11: 135–146. doi : 10.1111/j.1465-5922.1966.00135.x
↑ Jung, quoted in Stevens, Jung p. 109
↑ C. G. Jung, The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious (London 1996) p. 49
↑ Michael Fordham, Jungian psychotherapy (Avon 1978) p. 149
↑ Hillman, James and Shamdasani, Sonu. Lament of the Dead: Psychology after Jung's Red Book. (2013) W. W. Norton & Company ISBN 978-0-393-08894-6 (p.18)
↑ "Active Imagination". The Washington Society for Jungian Psychology. Archived from the original on September 7, 2004. Retrieved 2017-05-10.
↑ Steiner, R. (1972). An outline of occult science. Anthroposophic Press.
↑ Steiner, R. (2001). The human form and cosmic activity. In Guardian angels: connecting with our spiritual guides and helpers (pp. 25–42). Rudolf Steiner Press. pp. 29–30
1 2 Corbin, H. (1981). Creative imagination in the Sufism of Ibn Arabi. Princeton Univ Pr.
↑ Inayat Khan, Z. (1994). Preface, The man of light in Iranian Sufism. Omega Publications., p. iii.
↑ Corbin, H. (1989). Towards a chart of the imaginal. In Spiritual body and celestial Earth: From Mazdean Iran to Shi'ite Iran (5th ed.). Princeton: Princeton University Press.
1 2 Corbin, H. (1994). The man of light in Iranian Sufism. Omega Publications.
↑ Najm Kobra, quoted in Corbin (1994), p. 80.
1 2 Corbin, H. (1964). "Mundus Imaginalis or, the imaginary and the imaginal", Cahiers internationaux de symbolisme Vol. 6, pp. 3-26
↑ Mateus, Samuel (2013), “The Public Imaginal - prolegomena to a communicational approach of imaginary”, Comunicação, Mídia e Consumo, Vol.10, nº29, pp.31-50; https://www.academia.edu/5864487/The_Public_Imaginal_-_prolegomena_to_a_communicational_approach_to_Imaginary
↑ Jacques Hadamard (1954), The Psychology of Invention in the Mathematical Field
↑ Gilles Châtelet (1991), Figuring Space: Philosophy, Mathematics and Physics