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Active imagination is a process in Jungian psychology used to bridge the gap between the conscious and unconscious minds: opening oneself to the unconscious and giving free rein to fantasy while at the same time maintaining an active, attentive, conscious point of view. The process leads to a synthesis that contains both perspectives in a new and surprising way.
Jungian psychology heavily emphasises dream interpretation and the contents of the unconscious mind. During active imagination, Jungian analysts encourage clients to translate the contents of dreams without adding any analysis from the conscious mind.
This article is focused on providing a theoretical introduction and short history of the subject – for learning how to practice active imagination, read Active Imagination Technique: Essential Steps.
Active imagination requires a state of reverie, half-way between sleep and waking.
History of Active Imagination
Active imagination played a large role in theosophical works. Â The theosophy of post-Renaissance Europe embraced imaginal cognition. 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”.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge (buy his books from Amazon) distinguished imagination, which expresses realities of an imaginal realm transcending any personal existence, and “fancy”, or fantasy, which expresses the creativity of the artistic soul. For Coleridge, “imagination is the condition for cognitive participation in a sacramental universe“.
C.S. Lewis (buy his books from Amazon) considered that “reason is the organ of truth, but imagination is the organ of meaning“.
Rudolf Steiner suggested cultivating imaginative consciousness through meditative contemplations 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.
Active imagination book recommendations
The imaginal realm is known in Islamic philosophy as alam al-mithal, the imaginal world. 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 world’s concrete forms, divinity created a range of intermediate beings, the angelic co-creators of the universe. 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.
Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.
The JPTI, or Jungian Personality Type Indicator, is a personality assessment tool that is based on the influential theory of psychological types, which was introduced by Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung in 1921. This theory proposes that people interact with the world using four principal psychological functions, which are sensation, intuition, feeling, and thinking. Jung also suggested that one of these four functions tends to be dominant for a person most of the time.
Jungian history of Active Imagination
As developed by Carl Jung between 1913 and 1916, 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 and includes working with dreams and the creative self via imagination or fantasy.Â
“The Transcendent Function” (1958) is Jung’s first paper about the method he later came to call active imagination. It has two parts or stages: Letting the unconscious come up and Coming to terms with the unconscious. He describes its starting points (mainly moods, images, bodily sensations); and some of its many expressive forms (painting, sculpting, drawing, writing, dancing, weaving, dramatic enactment, inner visions, inner dialogues). In this early essay he links his method to work with dreams and the therapeutic relationship. The term “transcendent function” encompasses both the method and its inborn dynamic function that unites opposite position in the psyche.
Jung (buy his books from Amazon) linked active imagination with the processes of alchemy in that 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.
Carl Jung book recommendations
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How does it work
Active Imagination encourages the conscious and unconscious mind to communicate by making our conscious attention explore the unconscious mind. It is considered an essential aiding technique in individuation, and you can learn how to practice it alone by exploring the most obvious expressions of your unconscious mind – your dreams.Â
This article is focused on providing a theoretical introduction and short history of the subject – for learning how to practice active imagination, read Active Imagination Technique: Essential Steps.
You can also use a bad mood as a starting-point, and then try to find out what sort of fantasy-image it will produce, or what image expresses this mood. You then fix this image in the mind by concentrating your attention. Usually it will alter, as the mere fact of contemplating it animates it. The alterations must be carefully noted down all the time, for they reflect the psychic processes in the unconscious background, which appear in the form of images consisting of conscious memory material. In this way conscious and unconscious are united, just as a waterfall connects above and below.
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Your Thoughts about Active imagination
It’s highly recommended that you jot down any ideas or reflections that come to mind regarding Active imagination, including related behaviours, emotions, situations, or other associations you may make. This way, you can refer back to them on your Dashboard or Reflect pop-ups, compare them with your current behaviours, and make any necessary adjustments to keep evolving. Learn more about this feature and how it can benefit you.
