Active Imagination

 

 

ACTIVE IMAGINATION

The prima materia at times can manifest as and introduce us to the wholly adversarial other within ourselves. The prima materia is initiation by ordeal, in that it demands that we develop relationship with the other within ourselves, who, paradoxically, is ultimately none other than ourselves (see my article “Meeting the Other Within”). When the alchemists speak of “meditatio” and “imaginatio” (meditation and imagination), they mean, as Jung explains, “…an inner dialogue and hence a living relationship to the answering voice of the “other” in ourselves, i.e., of the unconscious.” The prima materia is a disguised, hidden and projected form of our inner voice and guiding spirit that initiates this dialogue. 

Jung called this dialogue with the other within ourselves, between the conscious and the unconscious, “active imagination.” The psychological process of active imagination is the equivalent of the symbolic operations of alchemy. Instead of passively watching the manifestations of the unconscious, in active imagination we fully engage with and actively participate in a conscious relationship with our unconscious. In active imagination we find ourselves being asked to creatively respond and come to terms with the voice of the “other” within ourselves. When an unconscious content is about to become conscious, it first becomes partially conscious, like something that is translucent -- simultaneously visible and invisible. In active imagination, we enter into a creative dialogue with these unconscious contents, facilitating their passage from an unconscious, potential state to a conscious, actual one. Active imagination is the most powerful technique Jung ever encountered for bridging this gap and metabolizing, digesting and assimilating the contents of the unconscious and hence, becoming conscious. As Jung so eloquently articulates, “Becoming conscious of an unconscious content amounts to its integration in the conscious psyche and is therefore a coniunctio Solis et Lunae [Sun and Moon].” A conjunction of Sun and Moon symbolizes a coming together and union of opposites. Making unconscious contents conscious is equivalent to alchemically liberating the spirit that is imprisoned in matter. 

When we are unconsciously identified with the contents of our unconscious, we cannot see these contents, as being identical with them, we have not separated ourselves from these contents so as to be able to see them as objects. These unconscious contents are still too much a part of our frame of reference through which we interpret our experience for us to examine them with any objectivity. Before we can integrate a content of the unconscious, we must distinguish ourselves from it. In active imagination, we “objectify” the contents of our unconscious by creatively giving them shape and form, thereby making them into an object that we, as subject, are separate from, and with whom we have an interactive relationship and dialogue. Jung comments, “The essential thing is to differentiate oneself from these unconscious contents by personifying them, and at the same time to bring them into relationship with consciousness. That is the technique for stripping them of their power.” Personifying and entering into conscious relationship with the figures of our unconscious as if they are autonomous, independent living entities takes away their compelling power over us. 

Any constellated, unconscious content which we are not in relationship with possesses us from behind and beneath our conscious awareness. When we are unconscious of something that is activated within us, we are identified with it and are compelled to act it out unconsciously in our life. When we are unconscious of something that is kindled within us, Jung writes, “it moves us or activates us as if we were marionettes. We can only escape that effect by making it conscious and objectifying it, putting it outside of ourselves, taking it out of the unconscious.” When fully objectified, we not only take away the unconscious content’s power over us, but we are able to access and unite with the power which animates it in a way which empowers ourselves. 

By objectifying these inner figures, we dis-identify from them and give a body and voice to these seemingly autonomous, disembodied and dismembered parts of ourselves who appear to have a mind of their own and simply need translation into the third-dimensional, spatio-temporal medium of matter. It is not hard to objectify the contents of the unconscious, as being autonomous, they seemingly possess an identity all their own, so they naturally have a tendency to spontaneously personify themselves within our psyche. Contemplating the archetypal paradox of how the solution is encoded in the seeming problem, Jung continues, “Their autonomy is a most uncomfortable thing to reconcile oneself to, and yet the very fact that the unconscious presents itself in that way gives us the best means of handling it.” This “best means” is the process of active imagination. 

To stop identifying with these unconscious contents is to step out of our inflated thinking that we, as seemingly independent, egoic agents existing in time, are creating the contents of our unconscious. Jung comments, “closer study shows that as a rule the images of the unconscious are not produced by consciousness, but have a reality and spontaneity of their own.” Paradoxically, thinking that we are creating the contents of the unconscious assures that we are in the thrall of and being created by the unconscious. Having its own logic and being beyond our control, the unconscious is truly autonomous, in that we, as ego, are not writing its script. On the contrary, to the extent that we are identified with a content of the unconscious, it is writing our script. 

Speaking about his own personal experience, Jung writes in his autobiography that it was actually animated figures within his imagination that “…brought home to me the crucial insight that there are things in the psyche which I do not produce, but which produce themselves and have their own life.” Seemingly living, autonomous figures existing inside of Jung’s imagination, figures whom Jung subjectively experienced as other than himself, revealed and literally taught Jung to recognize the autonomous nature of the psyche. Speaking about one such inner figure, Jung comments, “In my fantasies, I held conversations with him, and he said things which I had not consciously thought. For I observed clearly that it was he who spoke, not I.” Jung was “hearing voices,” which in his case as well as in many others, was not a pathological phenomenon, but an illumination (thank God for all of us that he didn’t get “medicated” out of his illumination by psychiatry). These inner figures helped Jung understand “that there is something in me which can say things that I do not know.” There is a figure in us who knows us better than we know ourselves.