Encountering Jung on Active Imagination
Introduction
It is a great pleasure to introduce this volume of Jung’s writings on active imagination.
For many years, people have had to search throughout the Collected Works and elsewhere, to identify and then read and read again these marvelous papers.
Now for the first time they are gathered together for publication.
My task is to present Jung’s ideas about active imagination as clearly as possible and set them in context.
Jung’s analytic method is based on the natural healing function of the imagination, so there are obviously many ways to express it.
All the creative art psychotherapies (art, dance, music, drama, poetry) as well as Sandplay can trace their roots to Jung’s early contribution.
I begin with Jung’s discovery of active imagination and then go into his ideas.
An in-depth review of the post-Jungian literature on active imagination is beyond the scope of this work, but my discussion of Jung is interwoven with some wonderful contributions from Jungian authors and others.
In closing, I say something about each of Jung’s essays and then it is time to tell the story of the Rainmaker.
Jung discovered active imagination during the years 1913–16.
Following the break with Freud in 1912–13, he was disorientated and experienced a time of intense inner turmoil.
He was able to carry on his practice, but for three years he couldn’t get
himself to read a professional book and he published relatively little.
He suffered from lethargy and fears; his moods threatened to overwhelm him.
He had to find a way, a method to heal himself from within.
Since he didn’t know what to do, he decided to engage with the impulses
and images of the unconscious.
In a 1925 seminar and again in his memoirs, he tells the remarkable story of his experiments that led to self-healing.
It all began with his rediscovery of the symbolic play of childhood.
As a middle-aged man in crisis, Jung had lost touch with the creative spirit.
A memory floated up of a time when he was a 10- or 11-yearold boy, deeply engrossed in building games.
The memory was filled with a rush of emotion and he realized the child was alive. His task became clear:
He had to develop an ongoing relationship to this lively spirit within imself.
But how was he to bridge the distance?
He decided to return in his imagination to that time and enact the fantasies that came to him.
And so he began to play, exactly as he had when he was a boy.
The process of symbolic play led him, inevitably, to one of his deepest complexes and he remembered a terrifying dream from his childhood.
This startling moment came in the midst of the building game.
Just as he placed a tiny altar-stone inside a miniature church, he remembered his childhood nightmare about an altar.
The connection impressed him deeply.
We know from his memoirs that his religious attitude was shattered when as a young child he came to associate the Lord Jesus with death.
Instead of the comfort he used to feel from saying his prayers, he began to feel distrustful and uneasy.
Surrounded by grown-ups who spoke only of a light, bright, loving God, he could not tell anyone about his ruminations (1961, pp. 9–14).
He spent all his life re-creating what he had lost as he developed a way to approach the psyche with a religious attitude.
His early nightmare both expressed the problem and pointed toward the solution.
Along with retrieving the fearful, long-buried dream, he gained a more mature understanding of it. His energy began to return and his thoughts clarified.
He could sense now many more fantasies stirring within. As he continued his building game, the fantasies came in an incessant stream.
Around the same time he began to experiment with specific meditative procedures, various ‘rites of entry’ to engage with his fantasies.
For example, he was sitting at his desk one day thinking over his fears when he made the conscious decision to ‘drop down’ into the depths. He landed on his feet and began to explore the strange inner landscape where he met the first of a long series of inner figures.
These fantasies seemed to personify his fears and other powerful emotions.
Over time, he realized that when he managed to translate his emotions
into images, he was inwardly calmed and reassured.
He came to see that his task was to find the images that are concealed in the emotions.
He continued his experiments, trying out different ways to enter into his fantasies voluntarily:
sometimes he imagined climbing down a steep descent; other times he imagined digging a hole, one shovel-full of dirt at a time.
With each descent, he explored the landscape and got better acquainted with the inner figures.
He used a number of expressive techniques (mainly writing, drawing, painting) to give symbolic form to his experience.
Here it is important to differentiate between symbolic expression and a state of unconscious merging or identification.
For Jung, the great benefit of active imagination is to ‘distinguish ourselves from the unconscious contents’ (1928b, par. 373).
Even as he opened to the unconscious and engaged with the fantasies that arose, he made every effort to maintain a selfreflective, conscious point of view.
Another way of saying this: He turned his curiosity toward the interest kept him alert and attentive.
The process led to an enormous release of energy as well as insights that gave him a new orientation.
The fantasy experiences ultimately reshaped his life.
When he emerged from the years of preoccupation with inner images (around 1919), he was ready to take on the leadership of his own school of psychology.
Many fundamental concepts of Jung’s analytical psychology come from his experiences with active imagination
For example, the Shadow, the Syzygy (Anima and Animus), the Persona, the Ego, and the Self are concepts, but they are at the same time personifications of different structures and functions of the psyche. Affect, archetype, complex, libido – all of these terms are based on real, human
experiences.
In a similar way he reminds us that active imagination is a natural, inborn process.
Although it can be taught, it is not so much a technique as it is an inner necessity:
‘I write about things which actually happen, and am not propounding methods of treatment’ (1928b, par. 369). EJoan Chodorow, Encountering Jung on Active Imagination, Page 19-22
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