I have tried that method with many patients and for many years, and I possess a large collection of such “opera.” It is most
interesting to watch the process.
Of course I don’t use active imagination as a panacea; there have to be definite indications that the method is suitable for the individual, and there are a number of patients with whom it would be wrong to force it upon them.
But often in the later stage of analysis, the objectivation of images replaces the dreams.
The images anticipate the dreams, and so the dream-material begins to peter out.
The unconscious becomes deflated in so far as the conscious mind relates to it.
Then you get all the material in a creative form and this has great advantages over dream-material.
It quickens the process of maturation, for analysis is a process of quickened maturation.
This definition is not my own invention; the old professor Stanley Hall invented the term. ~Carl Jung, CW 18, Para 399