Art and active imagination: Reflections on transference and the image1

Abstract

The term Active Imagination is sometimes applied rather uncritically to describe all forms of creative activity that take place in depth psychology. Whilst art in psychotherapy may evoke or be evoked by active imagination, it cannot automatically be classed as active imagination. In this article, investigation of the distinction between visualised mental imagery and art reveals two distinct forms of image-based psychological activity. Integrated and mediated within the transference and countertransference dynamic, it is proposed that the engagement in active imagination reflects and is influenced by the transference. Distinctions between sign and symbol, as well as diagrammatic and embodied imagery clarify the differences. Examples from clinical practice demonstrate each mode in action.

Keywords:

• Active Imagination
• art
• transference
• countertransference
• visualisation
• waking dreams
• free association
• sign
• symbol
• Jung

Notes

¹Earlier versions of this paper were given at the First International Academic Conference of Analytical Psychology held at the University of Essex in July 2002, The first benefit conference in aid of the Art Therapy Trust held in London in March 2005. A version was published in the Journal of Analytical Psychology Vol 50 No 2. 2005, entitled ‘Art, Dreams and Active Imagination: a Post Jungian perspective on Transference and the Image.’

²It is a common misapprehension to consider all circles in pictures to be mandalas. The circle is amongst the first marks a child makes and it could be argued that many such circular movements can be explained as the result of a circular hand arm movement that comes naturally to children. It therefore may have a relationship to expression of the self but it does not necessarily have the sophistication and intelligence of a consciously constructed mandala, such as those produced in the East for the purpose of meditation.

³Perhaps this is one of the fundamental and unacknowledged differences that remains between Jungians and Freudians today.

⁴I have developed this further in a paper presented at the Journal of Analytical Psychology 50^th Anniversary conference in Oxford in April 2005. It is entitled ‘Countertransference as active imagination: or whose is active imagination?’

⁵The discussion of this controversial claim that the archetypes are based on an a priori pattern has been the subject of much heated discussion in the Journal of Analytical Psychology in recent years.

⁶I am grateful to my colleague Alessandra Cavalli for pointing this out to me.