Active Imagination: Confrontation with the Unconscious

Active imagination is a technique developed by the Swiss psychologist and psychiatrist Carl Jung. He considered it the most powerful tool to access the unconscious and for achieving wholeness of personality.

Jung discovered this method between the years of 1913 and 1916, a period of disorientation and intense inner turmoil which he called his confrontation with the unconscious. He searched for a method to heal himself from within, through the power of the imagination.

Active imagination is a dialogue with different parts of yourself that live in the unconscious. In some way it is similar to dreaming, except that you are fully awake and conscious during the experience.

If we honestly want to find our own wholeness, to live our individual fate as fully as possible; if we truly want to abolish illusion on principle and find the truth of our own being, however little we like to be the way we are, then there is nothing that can help us so much in our endeavour as active imagination.

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📚 Recommended Reading

▶ Inner Work: Using Dreams and Active Imagination for Personal Growth
https://amzn.to/3t1zDhs
▶ Jung on Active Imagination
https://amzn.to/3MRwSqZ
▶ Encounters with the Soul: Active Imagination as Developed by C.G. Jung
https://amzn.to/3MWwfMT

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🎶 Music used

1. Dreams become Real – Kevin MacLeod
2. Lightless Dawn – Kevin MacLeod
3. Mysterious Ambient Background Music - The Rake - CO.AG
4. Oppressive Gloom - Kevin MacLeod
5. Crystal Dream mix - Background Music - CO.AG
6. Peaceful Ambient Background Music – Heroes – CO.AG
7. Colorless Aura - Kevin MacLeod

Subscribe to CO.AG Music
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Subscribe to Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
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Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
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📝 Sources

- Inner Work: Using Dreams and Active Imagination for Personal Growth by Robert A. Johnson
- Irvine, I. (2008). Jung, alchemy, and the technique of active imagination. Alchemy and Imagination.
- Jung on Active Imagination. Edited and with an Introduction by Joan Chodorow
- Encounters with the Soul: Active Imagination as developed by C.G. Jung by Barbara Hannah
- Active Imagination and Jung's Red Book
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PomC7WS7us8&t
- Active Imagination - This Jungian Life
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GUJP7XtDElg&t
- Encounters with the Soul - Barbara Hannah (discussion)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aMSy6SyAOvQ&t
- http://www.wholenesstherapy.com/public/johnson.htm

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⌛ Timestamps

0:00 Introduction
2:02 Confrontation with the Unconscious & The Red Book
4:46 Alchemy and Jung
5:39 Approaching Active Imagination
6:56 Precaution Before Starting Active Imagination
7:46 Inner Work: Active Imagination
9:21 Distinguishing Active Imagination from Passive Fantasy
9:51 Active Imagination Example: Talking with the Inner Artist
11:51 When You Think You’re Making Up Something
13:01 Active Imagination as Mythic Journey
14:10 The Four-Step Approach to Active Imagination
16:25 Step 1. Active Imagination: The Invitation
20:50 Step 2. Active Imagination: The Dialogue
25:00 Step 3. Active Imagination: The Values
27:25 Step 4. Active Imagination: The Rituals

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#unconscious #imagination #jung