Active Imagination

Where the Boundary Lies Between Fantasy and Active Imagination

The biggest difference between active imagination and fantasy is how the ego takes part. In fantasy the ego runs the story and produces whatever turn of events suits it. In active imagination the ego stands in a position where it is an observer and a participant at once, but it does not govern how the images unfold. It takes a willingness to be surprised by what comes up and to accept a turn you did not see coming. The other difference is emotional involvement. Fantasy works as a distraction, whereas active imagination can call up strong feelings, and scenes carrying anxiety or fear do occur. Whether or not something stirs emotionally is a practical clue for telling apart two situations: tracing a story you wrote yourself, or making contact with something outside your own inventions.

Letting the Dream Continue - The Easiest Way In

The easiest entry into active imagination is to start from a striking dream scene. Pick a scene that broke off, one whose ending you never saw, or one that carried strong feeling, and while awake bring your attention back to it. Then leave the question of what happens next to the images that arise on their own rather than constructing an answer. You can also speak to a figure who appeared in the dream and wait for a reply. What to watch for is whether the words and the developments that come back match your expectations. If everything goes as expected, you are close to reading out a script the ego wrote, and there is no harm in stopping there. The signal that the work has actually started is a reply that does not suit you, or the scene moving in a direction you would not have thought of.

Dangers Jung Warned About and Conditions for Safe Practice

Jung left it on record that the method is not entirely without danger. The reason he gave is that it can carry the one practicing it too far away from reality. The deeper you go into dialogue with the images, the more solid what happened there feels compared with everyday events, and the narrower your footing becomes when you come back.

Three things actually make a difference in continuing safely. Do it only in a stretch of life where your daily routine and your work are running. Always record what you experienced, in words or in a drawing, in a form you can reread later. And do not leave a dialogue you have opened hanging: bring it to some sort of stopping point the same day before you step away. Recording is not only for remembering. It is also the work of moving an image from something happening inside you to something set down outside you.

When low mood has gone on for a long time, when your sense of reality feels thin, or when strong anxiety raised in the dialogue will not settle, do not push further on your own. This technique grew up inside work done with an analyst. While your state of mind is unsteady, talking to a professional comes before chasing what a dream or an image means.

Non-Verbal Practice Through Painting, Clay, and Body Movement

Active imagination can be practiced through non-verbal expression as well as verbal dialogue. As Jung did in the Red Book, one way is to draw the images that surface. Shaping them in clay or sculpture, expressing them with the body through dance or movement, and sounding them out are all usable media. Jung remarked that the act of painting is itself a way of giving oneself a shape.

The advantage of a non-verbal medium is that it catches what tends to slip away the moment you try to put it into words. Putting things into language inevitably tidies them into frames you already know. A line, a color, a lump of clay, the direction the body faces: these leave room to hold something whose meaning has not settled. Which medium suits you varies, and combining them is fine, drawing first and then writing alongside it. Whether the drawing is any good does not matter. If what remains lets you see later what you were doing, that is enough.