Carl Jung on "Active Imagination" - Anthology

Carl Jung on “Active Imagination” – Anthology

This process of active imagination is the making conscious of the material which lies on the threshold of consciousness. Consciousness is an effort and you have to sleep in order to recuperate from the task. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lectures, Volume II, Page 12.

The alchemistic development of active imagination broke off after the Middle Ages but such interruptions do not occur in the East. ~Carl Jung, Modern Psychology, Vol. 3, Page 14.

Children are full of active imagination but we think of it as a childish activity. This is an error, for we find it everywhere among primitives and in all ancient cultures all over the world. ~Carl Jung, Modern Psychology, Vol. 3, Page 12.

Active imagination is to be understood as a way or method, to heal, raise and transform the personality. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture, Pages 174.

Through active imagination the image is imprinted on the psychic essence of personality with the purpose of transformation. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture, Pages 174.

Active imagination is the intentional activating of a function which otherwise remains passive. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture, Pages 175.

We do not stop to think that nothing would exist, there would be no culture in the world, if it were not for active imagination; it is always the forerunner, everything springs from it. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture, Pages 175.

I have seen such cases where a second personality brings about an absolute change in character. It is this phenomenon which is made conscious here through active imagination. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture, Pages 106.

The meaning of this passage age is that through active imagination the Yogin succeeds in making his senses and functions independent. It is the purification of the senses. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 20Jan1939, Page 59.

The unconscious comes into action through the attitude of the conscious in active imagination. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 3Mar1939, Page 98.

The East understands active phantasying and its inner meaning far better than we do. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 12July1935, Page 238.

If someone has a mastery of total critical evaluation, it is possible for him to reach the processes of the unconscious through automatic writing instead of through "active imagination." ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 18.

The technique of active imagination can prove very important in difficult situations -- where there is a visitation, say. It only makes sense when one has the feeling of being up against a blank wall. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 18.

Active imagination is only legitimate if one is confronted with an insurmountable obstacle in a situation where no one can give advice. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 18.

Active imagination and automatic writing, painting and carving pictures from the unconscious, are all indirect methods of finding out what the unconscious means. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 18.

Passive fantasy […] is always in need of conscious criticism […] whereas active fantasy [,,,] does not require criticism so much as understanding. ~Carl Jung, CW 6, Par. 714.

I used the same technique [Active Imagination] of the descent, but this time I went much deeper. The first time I should say I reached a depth of about one thousand feet, but this time it was a cosmic depth. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 68

The paintings initially started out as illustrations of the fantasies in the text, and thereafter could be considered active imaginations in their own right, at times referring to contemporaneous fantasies in Jung’s Black Books. ~Sonu Shamdasani, Introduction 1925 Seminar, Page xii

Barbara Hannah: The friendly goddess told him that only her father, Proteus, could tell them how they could get home.

Menelaus told Telemachus how his anima had taught him to deal with the situation when he was delayed on an island called Pharos, off the mouth of the Nile, by contrary winds.

He had reached the point of despair ( as it sometimes seems we have to do before we will face active imagination in its inexorable reality), for he had used up all his supplies.

His whole crew, as well as Helen and himself, were faced with starvation if the wind did not change.

One day, when he was walking on the shore in deep dejection, he was approached by the beautiful Eidothea, ''daughter of the mighty Proteus, the Old Man of the Sea."

First, she chided him severely for his lack of initiative in allowing himself to be cooped up on the island, where they were all growing weaker every day.

Menelaus assured her that he longed to leave, but could only think he must somehow have offended the immortals who were now denying him any favorable wind.

The friendly goddess told him that only her father, Proteus, could tell them how they could get home.

Menelaus must set a trap for him and force him to explain the whole situation.

Menelaus begged her to tell him how to '' catch this mysterious old being,'' and she then enlightened him as to what he should do.

The next morning he met her, with the three best men of his crew, as arranged, at daybreak.

They gathered at the mouth of the cave where Proteus always went for a midday nap which he only took after counting his seals, as a shepherd counts his sheep.

The goddess then covered all four men with the skins of four freshly flayed seals and laid them in lairs that she had scooped out in the sand, filling all their nostrils with a sweet-smelling stuff so that they could endure the stench of the ''monsters of the deep.''

She then left them to carry out her instructions by themselves.

All morning, as she had foretold, the seals came up "thick and fast" from the sea, and lay down in companies all around them.

At midday, the old man himself emerged, found all of his fat seals awaiting him and counted the four men, entirely unsuspiciously, among the rest.

Then he went into the cave for his midday sleep.

This was their moment.

He was hardly asleep before the four men jumped on him and held him fast.

As Eidothea had warned Menelaus, Proteus's "skill and cunning" had not deserted him and he transformed himself '' into a bearded lion and then into a snake and after that a panther and a giant boar.

He changed into running water too and a great tree in leaf.''

But they set their teeth and held him like a vice.

Then, as the goddess had foretold, at last he tired of his magic repertoire and took· his own form again.

Breaking into speech, he asked questions and allowed Menelaus to question him.

He then revealed that Menelaus had blundered in leaving Troy so quickly.

He should have stayed '' and offered rich sacrifices to Zeus and all the other gods" if he "wished to get home fast across the wine-dark sea.''

Now he could only return to Egypt in order to make "ceremonial offerings to the everlasting gods."

When Menelaus heard he must take "the long and weary trip over the misty seas to Egypt," he was heartbroken but, knowing there was no escape, he promised Proteus to do exactly as he advised.

Then he asked more questions, this time referring to the safety of his countrymen, whom he and Nestor had left behind at Troy.

After warning him that his tears would flow, Proteus gave him the information he wanted, of which I will mention two examples.

Agamemnon, Menelaus's brother, had been murdered an hour or two after reaching his home by the treachery of his wife and her love!'; Aegisthus (Clytemnestra was Helen's sister, for the two brothers had married two sisters).

The second fate I will mention was the most important to Telemachus.

His father, Odysseus, was unhappily imprisoned on a distant island by Calypso, the witch.

After staying some time in great luxury with Menelaus, Pallas Athene warned Telemachus that it was time he went home.

She guided him home by a circuitous route to avoid the trap to kill him that had been set by the infamous suitors.

Instead of letting him go home, she guided him to his loyal swineherd's cottage where he found his father (who had at last returned to Ithaca after nineteen years of wandering), disguised as a beggar.

My chief point in relating this material from the Odyssey is to show the importance of clinging fast to the first image that appears to us in an active imagination, not allowing it to escape us by quick transformations, as it still will do if it is left to itself.

But I have used a little more of the Odyssey than that which I cited in another book, so as to draw the reader's attention to the importance of a collaboration between the conscious and unconscious.

If he had not been helped by what we call the unconscious, which Homer depicts as the immortals, what chance would either Menelaus or Telemachus have had of getting back to his home?

Without the knowledge that Proteus gave him, would Menelaus ever have returned to Egypt, when he says it broke his heart to do so?

Yet only in Egypt could he get rich-enough sacrifices to appease the gods so that they would send him favorable winds.

And Telemachus would undoubtedly have been killed in the suitors' trap if he had not had the guidance of Pallas Athene.

All this is even clearer in the main story of the Odyssey, that of Odysseus himself, but we have seen enough to be able to see how the same immortals will still guide us today, though we call them by different names in our modern material.

I will try, in later chapters, to point out the parallels between the ancient Odyssey and our own efforts. ~Barbara Hannah, Encounters with the Soul: Active Imagination, Pages 23-26.

Carl Jung across the web:

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Great Sites to visit:

1. Jenna Lilla's Path of the Soul http://jennalilla.org/

2. Steve Jung-Hearted Parker's Jung Currents http://jungcurrents.com/


3. Frith Luton's Jungian Dream Analysis and Psychotherapy: http://frithluton.com/articles/

Carl Jung on "Active Imagination"

I was treating a young artist, and he had the greatest trouble in understanding what I meant by active imagination. He tried all sorts of things but he could not get at it. The difficulty with him was that he could not think. Musicians, painters, artists of all kinds, often can't think at all, because they never intentionally use their brain. This man's brain too was always working for itself; it had its artistic imaginations and he couldn't use it psychologically, so he couldn't understand. I gave him every chance to try, and he tried all sorts of stunts. I cannot tell you all the things he did, but I will tell you how he finally succeeded in using his imagination psychologically: CW 18, Para 392.

I live outside the town, and he had to take the train to get to my place. It starts from a small station, and on the wall of that station was a poster. Each time he waited for his train he looked at that poster. The poster was an advertisement for Mürren in the Bernese Alps, a colourful picture of the waterfalls, of a green meadow and a hill in the centre, and on that hill were several cows. So he sat there staring at that poster and thinking that he could not find out what I meant by active imagination. And then one day he thought: “Perhaps I could start by having a fantasy about that poster. I might for instance imagine that I am myself in the poster, that the scenery is real and that I could walk up the hill among the cows and then look down on the other side, and then I might see what there is behind that hill” CW18 ¶ 393

So he went to the station for that purpose and imagined that he was in the poster. He saw the meadow and the road and walked up the hill among the cows, and then he came up to the top and looked down, and there was the meadow again, sloping down, and below was a hedge with a stile. So he walked down and over the stile, and there was a little footpath that ran round a ravine, and a rock, and when he came round that rock, there was a small chapel, with its door standing a little ajar. He thought he would like to enter, and so he pushed the door open and went in, and there upon an altar decorated with pretty flowers stood a wooden figure of the Mother of God. He looked up at her face, and in that exact moment something with pointed ears disappeared behind the altar. He thought, “Well, that's all nonsense,” and instantly the whole fantasy was gone CW18 ¶ 394

He went away and said, “Now again I haven't understood what active imagination is.” And then, suddenly, the thought struck him: “Well, perhaps that really was there; perhaps that thing behind the Mother of God, with the pointed ears, that disappeared like a flash, really happened.” Therefore he said to himself: “I will just try it all over as a test.” So he imagined that he was back in the station looking at the poster, and again he fantasied that he was walking up the hill. And when he came to the top of the hill, he wondered what he would see on the other side. And there was the hedge and the stile and the hill sloping down. He said, “Well, so far so good. Things haven't moved since, apparently.” And he went round the rock, and there was the chapel. He said: “There is the chapel, that at least is no illusion. It is all quite in order.” The door stood ajar and he was quite pleased He hesitated a moment and said: “Now, when I push that door open and I see the Madonna on the altar, then that thing with the pointed ears should jump down behind the Madonna, and if it doesn't, then the whole thing is bunk!” And so he pushed the door open and lookedand there it all was and the thing jumped down, as before, and then he was convinced. From then on he had the key and knew he could rely on his imagination, and so he learned to use it CW18 ¶ 395

There is no time to tell you about the development of his images, nor how other patients arrive at the method. For of course everybody gets at it in his own way. I can only mention that it might also be a dream or an impression of a hypnagogic nature from which active imagination can start. I really prefer the term “imagination” to “fantasy,” because there is a difference between the two which the old doctors had in mind when they said that “opus nostrum,” our work, ought to be done “per veram imaginationem et non phantastica”by true imagination and not by a fantastical one. In other words, if you take the correct meaning of this definition, fantasy is mere nonsense, a phantasm, a fleeting impression; but imagination is active, purposeful creation. And this is exactly the distinction I make too CW18 ¶ 396

A fantasy is more or less your own invention, and remains on the surface of personal things and conscious expectations. But active imagination, as the term denotes, means that the images have a life of their own and that the symbolic events develop according to their own logicthat is, of course, if your conscious reason does not interfere CW18 ¶ 397

You begin by concentrating upon a starting point. I will give you an example from my own experience. When I was a little boy, I had a spinster aunt who lived in a nice old-fashioned house. It was full of beautiful old coloured engravings. Among them was a picture of my grandfather on my mother's side. He was a sort of bishop, and he was represented as coming out of his house and standing on a little terrace. There were handrails and stairs coming down from the terrace, and a footpath leading to the cathedral. He was in full regalia, standing there at the top of the terrace. Every Sunday morning I was allowed to pay a call on my aunt, and then I knelt on a chair and looked at that picture until grandfather came down the steps. And each time my aunt would say, “But, my dear, he doesn't walk, he is standing there.” But I knew I had seen him walking down

You see how it happened that the picture began to move. And in the same way, when you concentrate on a mental picture, it begins to stir, the image becomes enriched by details, it moves and develops. Each time, naturally, you mistrust it and have the idea that you have just made it up, that it is merely your own invention. But you have to overcome that doubt, because it is not true. We can really produce precious little by our conscious mind. All the time we are dependent upon the things that literally fall into our consciousness; therefore in German we call them Einfälle CW18 ¶ 398

For instance, if my unconscious should prefer not to give me ideas, I could not proceed with my lecture, because I could not invent the next step. You all know the experience when you want to mention a name or a word which you know quite well, and it simply does not present itself; but some time later it drops into your memory. We depend entirely upon the benevolent co-operation of our unconscious. If it does not co-operate, we are completely lost. Therefore I am convinced that we cannot do much in the way of conscious invention; we over-estimate the power of intention and will. And so when we concentrate on an inner picture and when we are careful not to interrupt the natural flow of events, our unconscious will produce a series of images which make a complete story

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 CW18 ¶ 399

Since by active imagination all the material is produced in a conscious state of mind, the material is far more rounded out than the dreams with their precarious language. And it contains much more than dreams do; for instance, the feeling-values are in it, and one can judge it by feeling CW18 ¶ 400

Quite often, the patient themselves feel that certain material contains a tendency to visibility. They say, for instance: “That dream was so impressive, if I only could paint I would try to express its atmosphere.” Or they feel that a certain idea should be expressed not rationally but in symbols. Or they are gripped by an emotion which, if given form, would be explainable, and so on. And so they begin to draw, to paint, or to shape their images plastically, and women sometimes do weaving. I have even had one or two women who danced their unconscious figures. Of course they can also be expressed in writing

I have many complete series of such pictures. They yield an enormous amount of archetypal material. Just now I am about to work out the historical parallels of some of them. I compare them with the pictorial material produced in similar attempts in past centuries, particularly in the early Middle Ages. Certain elements of the symbolism go back to Egypt. In the East we find many interesting parallels to our unconscious material, even down lo the last details. This comparative work gives us a most valuable insight into the structure of the unconscious. You have to hand the necessary parallels to the patients too, not of course in such an elaborate way as you would present it in a scientific study, but as much as each individual needs in order to understand his archetypal images. For he can see their real meaning only when they are not just a queer subjective experience with no external connections, but a typical, ever-recurring expression of the objective facts and processes of the human psyche. By objectifying his impersonal images, and understanding their inherent ideas, the patient is able to work out all the values of his archetypal material. Then he can really see it, and the unconscious becomes understandable to him. Moreover, this work has a definite effect upon him. Whatever he has put into it works back on him and produces a change of attitude which I tried to define by mentioning the non-ego centre CW18 ¶ 401

Barbara Hannah on Active Imagination

Barbara Hannah on Active Imagination


Barbara Hannah was born in England but went to Zurich in 1920 to study with Carl Jung. She lived in Switzerland the rest of her life and was a practicing psychotherapist and teacher at the C. G. Jung Institute. She was the author of Encounters with the Soul: Active Imagination. Many of her major observations about Active Imagination recorded in that book are listed below:

Jung (Re)Discovers Active Imagination

Hannah gives credit to Jung for discoverying, not inventing Active Imagination “for active imagination is a form of meditation which man has used, at least from the dawn of history, if not earlier, as a way of learning to know his God or gods. (p.3)”

Jung Finds Dreams An Inadequate Method

“It was only when he was confronted with so many of his own dreams which he could not understand that he learned how completely inadequate the method really was (dream analysis), and was therefore obliged to search further. (p.4)”

Active Imagination is Hard Work

“Above all, we must realize that active imagination is hard work…we undertake it in order to open negotiations with everything that is unknown in our own psyche…our whole peace of mind depends on these negotiations; otherwise, we are forever a house divided against itself, distressed without knowing why and very insecure because something unknown in us is constanstly opposing us. As Jung writes in Psychology and Alchemy: “We know that the mask of the unconscious is not rigid—it reflects the face we turn towards it. Hostility lends it a threatening aspect, friendliness softens its features. (p.6)”

Don’t Take The Figures Of Living Persons Into The Process

“…one should never take the figures of living people into one’s fantasies. As soon as there is any temptation to do this, we should stop and very carefully inquire again into our motives…it is likely we trying to use the unconscious for our own personal ends…Here, we come to the great fundamental difference between using active imagination in the right or wrong way. The question is: Are we doing it honestly to try to reach and discover our own wholeness, or are we dishonestly using it as an attempt to get our own way? The latter use may apparently be very successful for a time, but sooner or later it always leads to disaster. (p.12)”

Jung Never Interfered With Active Imagination

“The analyst should interfere with active imagination as little as possible. When I was being analyzed by Jung, he always wanted to hear if I had done any active imagination, but after listening carefully to any that I had done, he never analyzed it or commented on it at, all…Following that, he always asked for dreams and analyzed them with the greatest care. This was to avoid influencing the active imagination, which should always be allowed to develop in its own way. (p.13)”

When The Time Is Right

“…I seldom encourage people who are working with me to do active imagination in their early analysis; rather, I do my best to focus their attention on the reality of the unconscious until I feel that they really know from experience that they are dealing with something which is just as real as the outside world. (p.13).”

How To Do Active Imagination (p.16-21)

1. Be alone and free of disturbances.

2. Sit down and concentrate on seeing or hearing whatever comes up from the unconscious. This means learning how to let the images to gain in intensity (over our usual thoughts) and to be expressed freely. “Jung once told me that he thought the dream was always going on in the unconscious, but that it usually needs sleep and the complete cessation of attention to outer things for it to register in consciousness at all. There is one very important rule that should always be retained in every technique of active imagination…we must give our full, conscious attention to what we say or do, just as much—or even more—that we would in an important outer situation. This will prevent it from remaining passive fantasy.”

3. When this is accomplished, “the image must be prevented from sinking back again into the unconscious, by drawing, painting or writing down whatever has been seen or heard…Images must not be allowed to change like a kaleidoscope. If the first image is a bird, for instance, left to itself it may turn with lightning rapidity into a lion, a ship on the sea, a scene from a battle, or whatnot. The technique consists of keeping one’s attention on the first image and not letting the bird escape until it has explained why it appeared to us, what message it brings us from the unconscious, or what it wants to know from us. “

4. “Some people cannot get into touch with the unconscious directly. An indirect approach that often reveals the unconscious particularly well, is to write stories, apparently about other people. Such stories invariably reveal the parts of the storyteller’s own psyche of which he or she is completely unconscious.”

5. Another technique in dealing with the unconscious is through conversations with contents of the unconscious that appear personified. “Jung used to say that, as a rule, this was a later stage in active imagination…”

Source: Hannah, Barbara. Encounters with the Soul: Active Imagination, (Sigo, 1981).

Carl Jung on how to use Active Imagination.

The initial question to be directed. . . would be: "Who or what has come alive? . .

Who or what has entered my psychic life and created disturbances and wants to be heard?"

To this you should add: "let it speak!"

Then switch off your noisy consciousness and listen quietly inwards and look at the images that appear before your inner eye, or hearken to the words which the muscles of your speech apparatus are trying to form.

Write down what then comes without criticism.

Images should be drawn or painted assiduously no matter whether you can do it or not.

Once you have got at least fragments of these contents, then you may meditate on them afterwards.

Don’t criticize anything away!

If any questions arise, put them to the unconscious again the next day.

Don’t be content with your own explanations no matter how intelligent they are. . . .

Treat any drawings the same way.

Meditate on them afterwards and every day go on developing what is unsatisfactory about them.

The important thing is to let the unconscious take the lead. Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 28-29.

Our dreams propel us into a landscape of universal symbols, which can speak both to our deepest personal realizes and to the collective archetypal world that underpins them. Claire Dunne, Wounded Healer of the Soul, Page 86.