10-16-2011, 03:11 AM
Quote:It is my task here to give an account of "active imagination" in the psychology of C.G. Jung. As is well known, this is a particular dialectical way of coming to terms with the unconscious. Jung began to discover it around 1916 in his work on himself. He described it for the first time in detail in 1929 in his introduction to Richard Wilhelm's Secret of the Golden Flower, and in 1933 in "The Relationship between the Ego and the Unconscious." He found that a beneficial effect arises from attempting to objectivize contents of the unconscious state and relate them consciously. This can be done through painting or sculpting--or, more rarely, through dancing--but principally through writing down inwardly observed phenomena. Conversations with inner figures play an especially prominent role here.http://www.jungny.com/carl.jung.248.html
In working with shamans, I've found that Jung's 'active imagination' is closely aligned with the so-called 'journeying'. That is, two different descriptions of the exact same experience. But both methods aimed at healing.