Active imagination

1. Introduction

Version followed: Jung's classical method as set out in "The Transcendent Function" (written 1916, published 1958, CW 8) and Mysterium Coniunctionis (CW 14, §§749–756), with Jung's letters and practice as collected in Chodorow (ed.), Jung on Active Imagination (1997) and recorded in The Red Book (2009). The stage sequence used for teaching is Marie-Louise von Franz's (1980) as transmitted by later Jungian trainers, and the practical rules are Barbara Hannah's, Encounters with the Soul (1981). Post-Jungian transference-based redefinitions (Fordham, Davidson) are not followed.

Active imagination is a method in which the waking ego deliberately lets an unconscious image, mood or figure arise. It then gives that material concrete form (writing, painting, clay, movement) and enters into a real, two-sided exchange with it. Jung called the resulting union of conscious and unconscious standpoints the transcendent function: a "third thing", a new attitude that neither side could have produced alone. Change comes from that confrontation (Auseinandersetzung) and from the person then turning what they learned into an ethical obligation in outer life. Interpretation alone does not produce it. Jung wrote that "the central thing is not the interpretation" (1928, quoted in Shamdasani). [source: Jung CW 8 via Shamdasani, Jung's Practice of the Image; Tozzi/IAAP; Hannah 1981 p. 22]

Note: active imagination is a method within Jungian analysis, not a manualised therapy. There are no session counts, fidelity scales or protocols. Jung himself called it "no system" and "childishly simple" (1938 lecture, via Shamdasani). Everything below about session structure, timing and phase criteria is derived from the authors' descriptions and marked [synthesis] where it is mine.

2. Framework

2a. Jung's two stages (CW 8, The Transcendent Function) [source: Shamdasani summary of CW 8 §§155–186; jungiancenter.org]

1. Letting the unconscious come up. Use systematic exercises that eliminate critical attention and produce "a vacuum in consciousness" (CW 8 §155). Then concentrate on a mood, image or affect and let fantasy develop without losing that starting affect.
2. Coming to terms. The material is given form and then met by the ego. Jung named two tendencies here, creative formulation (aesthetic shaping) and understanding (working out meaning). Each needs the other. Overvaluing either one blocks the transcendent function. The confrontation is "exactly as if a dialogue were taking place between two human beings" (CW 8 §186, via Shamdasani).

2b. Von Franz's stages (1980), the standard teaching sequence [source: Mundus Imaginalis Module 8, appliedjung.com, secondary; von Franz's original chapter not drawn on, wording paraphrased] [uncertain: exact wording]

2c. Mysterium Coniunctionis: the larger arc (CW 14) [source: CW 14 §§706, 749–756 via Pacifica LibGuide and Jung Lexicon; overall stage scheme: CW 14 §§669ff] [uncertain: paragraph ranges for the stages]

Jung reads the alchemist Gerhard Dorn's three stages of conjunction as the psychology of active imagination:

1. Unio mentalis: through self-knowledge, the mind separates from the pull of instinct and affect. Clinically, this is the work of observing and confronting the images.
2. Reunion of the unio mentalis with the body: insight is made real in lived life.
3. Union with the unus mundus: relation to the transcendent unity behind psyche and world. This is a horizon, not a treatment goal.

Jung equates the alchemical opus with active imagination (§749). He says the participant must act "as if the drama being enacted before your eyes were real" (§753), and he frames the aim as integrating the statements of the unconscious (§756).

2d. Format and dosage [synthesis, from Hannah pp. 12–16 and Jung's practice]

• Setting: Classically the analysand does it alone, between sessions (Hannah p. 16: alone and uninterrupted) and brings the record to analysis. Jung rarely commented on Hannah's active imaginations, to avoid influencing them (Hannah pp. 12–13). The analyst's job is to assess readiness, teach, contain and spot misuse.
• In-session variant [synthesis]: In contemporary practice a first, brief, therapist-accompanied trial in session (10–20 min, with debriefing) is common and safer for a new practitioner. It is not described by Jung or Hannah.
• Timing in therapy: Hannah seldom introduces it early in analysis. She first establishes the reality of the unconscious, usually through dream work (p. 13). Von Franz treats the capacity for symbolic thinking as the indispensable precondition (1980 p. 131, via Tozzi/IAAP).
• Length/frequency: Not specified in the sources [uncertain]. My suggestion is 15–45 minutes, one to a few times a week, with each episode recorded, over months to years. Jung's own Red Book phase ran roughly 1913–1916 and was elaborated for years after.
• Phase criteria for introducing it [synthesis]: (a) a stable outer life and an ego that can tolerate affect (Hannah pp. 5–6); (b) the person can treat images as symbolic, not literal; (c) dream work has engaged them; (d) no current psychotic process (see §5); (e) the person's motive is wholeness, not control (Hannah p. 12).

3. Guiding principles

[source: Hannah 1981 pp. 2–22; Jung's letters to Layard 1947 and Morgan 1926, CW 8, CW 14, via Shamdasani; Tozzi/IAAP. One-line meanings are mine.]

• The unconscious is a real, autonomous partner. Treat figures as persons with their own standpoint ("Treat her as a person", letter to Layard 1947). → Don't reduce an image to "just your mother complex" in the moment. Let the client meet it.
• Active, not passive, fantasy. Watching alone becomes "cinema" (Hannah p. 21). The ego must enter. → Every exercise eventually asks, "And what do you do or say?"
• Non-interference with the image. "Don't try to make it into something" (Layard letter); the image has everything it needs (CW 14 §749). → Don't steer, suggest scenery or add content. Ask the client to observe.
• Hold one image. Avoid "impatient jumping" (Layard letter) and kaleidoscopic drift (Hannah p. 21). → Return to the starting image when it dissolves.
• Take it as real. Jung accepted fantasy "as perfectly real" (1925 seminar) and asked the participant to act as if the drama were real (CW 14 §753). → The client reacts with genuine feeling and conviction, not role-play.
• The ego keeps its own standpoint. The aim is an equal confrontation, not submission (Hannah p. 22; Tozzi). → Voices are not oracles. The client may disagree, bargain or refuse.
• Discern who is speaking. Judge a voice by what it says (Hannah p. 19). → Ask, "Who is this? Does this ring true?"
• Neither side is privileged. Don't favour positive figures and dismiss negative ones (Hannah pp. 19–20). Hostility makes figures threatening (p. 6). → Encourage a firm but friendly stance toward frightening figures.
• Give it form and record it. Unrecorded material disappears (Hannah p. 18). → Every episode ends with writing, a picture or a remembered movement.
• Form and understanding together. Over-aestheticising and premature interpretation both block the process (CW 8). → Watch for "pretty art" with no meaning and for analysis without experience.
• Ethical obligation. Insight "must be converted into an ethical obligation" (Jung, MDR, via Tozzi). Otherwise the power principle takes over (Hannah p. 11). → Ask, "What does this require of you this week?"
• No living persons in the fantasy. Using real people is manipulation (Hannah p. 12). → If a known person appears, treat them as an inner figure, or stop and examine the motive.
• Independence from the analyst. Jung used willingness to do it as a test of seeking independence (Hannah p. 12) and had Tina Keller write to her inner figures instead of to him. → Use it to reduce dependency, and don't become the interpreter of every image.
• Seriousness and safety. It is "a form of play, but a bloody serious one" (von Franz in Hannah p. 2). The danger is panic and being swamped (Hannah pp. 5–6). → Screen, pace and keep a human companion available.
• Roots in outer life first. Jung's own descent came after marriage, family and profession were in place (Hannah pp. 5–6). → Don't introduce it to someone whose outer life is collapsing.

4. Intervention inventory

The interventions below are the techniques Jung, von Franz, Hannah and Jung's letters actually describe. Step sequencing and all example language are mine (illustrative) unless quoted. Section 4 sources: CW 8 and CW 14 and Jung's letters via Shamdasani; Hannah 1981; Pacifica LibGuide; Jung Lexicon; appliedjung modules (secondary).

4.1 Readiness assessment and timing

• Purpose: Decide whether and when to offer active imagination. It is the gate to every other technique.
• When: Before first introducing the method, and again after any destabilisation.
• Steps:
  1. Check the contraindications (see §5.1): history or signs of psychosis, current dissociation, a fragile ego, an active crisis, or substance misuse.
  2. Assess outer roots: work, relationships and routines stable enough to return to (Hannah pp. 5–6).
  3. Test symbolic capacity (von Franz 1980 p. 131, via Tozzi). Ask the client to take a dream image as a picture of an inner situation and see whether they can hold the "as if" without concretising.
  4. Explore motive. Wanting to explore oneself is suitable. Wanting to obtain things, influence people or have experiences for their own sake is a warning sign (Hannah p. 12).
  5. Prefer clients already engaged with dreams. Hannah introduces the method later in analysis (p. 13).
  6. Agree on a human support: someone the client can confide in, although the work itself is done alone (Hannah pp. 11–12).
• Example language (illustrative): "Before we try this, I want to make sure your everyday life is a solid place to come back to. How have work, sleep and the people around you been this month?"
• Watch for: Eagerness for "visions", magical thinking about images, or a recent psychotic or manic episode. Defer if present. Working: the client approaches it with curiosity and caution, not hunger.

4.2 Teaching the attitude (active vs passive fantasy; not guided imagery)

• Purpose: Give the client the stance that defines the method. The ego is receptive to the image and fully engaged in responding.
• When: At the first introduction, and whenever the practice drifts into daydream or into ego-scripting.
• Steps:
  1. Contrast passive fantasy (daydreams, cinema, "radio"; Hannah p. 21) with active participation, where the ego enters and responds as in an important real situation (pp. 20–22).
  2. Contrast it with guided imagery. In active imagination the therapist does not supply scenes, and the image is allowed its own changes (Layard letter). [synthesis: the guided-imagery contrast is mine]
  3. Explain the two moves: let it come, then come to terms (CW 8).
  4. Optionally offer an example Jung used. A patient who could not grasp the method understood it when he imagined walking into a railway poster and climbing the hill in it (Chodorow pp. 143–144, via appliedjung review).
• Example language (illustrative): "This isn't a daydream where you script what you'd like, and I won't be guiding you through a scene. You let something appear, take it seriously as if it were real, and then you, as yourself, respond to it."
• Watch for: Clients who hear this as visualisation or self-hypnosis. Working: the client can say in their own words the difference between watching, steering and engaging.

4.3 Emptying the ego-mind (eliminating critical attention)

• Purpose: Von Franz's stage 1, Jung's "vacuum in consciousness" (CW 8 §155). It suspends the ego's commentary so unconscious material can enter.
• When: At the opening of every session.
• Steps:
  1. Arrange to be alone and uninterrupted (Hannah p. 16), seated, with recording materials at hand.
  2. Let the client let go of their train of thought. Jung's reference points were wu wei and Eckhart's Gelassenheit, letting things happen (Golden Flower commentary 1929, via Shamdasani).
  3. Take an expectant stance, "as if something definite is about to happen" (Jung, paraphrased via appliedjung Module 2).
  4. When critical thoughts arise ("this is silly", "I'm making this up"), note them and return to waiting. Jung's 1938 instruction was to watch "with no prejudice or expectation" and not to give the image "a cramped attention" (via Shamdasani).
• Example language (illustrative): "Let the usual commentary go quiet. You don't have to produce anything. Just wait, attentively, and notice what turns up."
• Watch for: Effortful straining, which Hannah calls a conscious "cramp" (p. 17), or drowsiness and dissociative drift. Working: the client notices something they did not choose.

4.4 Starting from a mood or affect

• Purpose: Jung's original 1916 entry point, which turns a strong but formless emotion into an image that can be engaged.
• When: The client is gripped by an irrational mood, irritation, depression or anxiety that has no clear content. CW 14 §749 lists "an irrational mood, an affect" among starting points [uncertain: exact wording; paraphrased].
• Steps:
  1. Have the client become as conscious as possible of the mood, immersing in it without trying to fix it (CW 8).
  2. Let fantasy arise out of the mood. Note whatever image, words or impulse come, without leaving the starting affect (CW 8, via Shamdasani).
  3. Give the result concrete form by writing, drawing or modelling (§4.10).
  4. Then move to engagement (§§4.7–4.9).
• Example language (illustrative): "Instead of pushing the heaviness away, stay with it. If it had a shape, a place or a voice, what would come?"
• Watch for: The mood intensifying past the window of tolerance. If so, ground and stop (§4.15). Working: the affect becomes an image or figure the client can stand in relation to, and the felt pressure eases or becomes meaningful.

4.5 Starting from a dream image (continuing the dream)

• Purpose: Use an existing unconscious product as the doorway. This is the most common entry in Hannah's case material.
• When: A dream ends unresolved, a dream figure seems significant, or one image is charged.
• Steps:
  1. Choose a single image or the dream's final moment. In Hannah's case "Edward", the work continues from a brothel dream (pp. 29–30).
  2. Contemplate it and watch how it changes, doing "nothing but observing" (Layard letter 1947, on a dream's "yellow mass").
  3. When it moves or a figure appears, step in (§4.7).
• Example language (illustrative): "Go back to the moment the dream stopped, the door half open. Look at it again and see what happens next. Don't decide it. Watch."
• Watch for: The client re-narrating the dream instead of letting it continue, or rewriting it into a wished-for outcome. Working: the scene develops in ways that surprise the client.

4.6 Starting from a spontaneous fantasy, picture or body impulse

• Purpose: Use other "handy" forms of the unconscious (CW 14 §749) as entry points: hypnagogic images, sudden ideas, slips, a picture, or a physical impulse.
• When: For clients who rarely recall dreams, and for motor or kinaesthetic types (CW 8). For the list of sources (wake-state interferences, ideas "out of the blue", slips), see jungiancenter.org.
• Steps: Same as §4.5, starting from the chosen fragment. For an external picture, use the railway-poster method from §4.2: enter the picture as a place.
• Example language (illustrative): "That image that flashed up on the train, the stone stairway. Let's begin there. Picture yourself at its foot."
• Watch for: Choosing a pleasant image to avoid charged material. Working: the fragment opens into a scene that carries feeling.

4.7 Fixing and holding the image; observing its changes

• Purpose: Von Franz's stage 2. It keeps attention on one image long enough for it to come alive and change on its own.
• When: As soon as an image appears.
• Steps:
  1. Concentrate attention on the image. Contemplation "animates it" (Jung Lexicon).
  2. Note every change as it happens (Jung Lexicon: alterations must be carefully noted).
  3. If it slips away or kaleidoscopes, return to it. Don't let it escape "before it explains itself" (Hannah p. 21, paraphrased).
  4. Don't edit or embellish it (Layard letter).
• Example language (illustrative): "Stay with the cat. Don't go looking for anything new. What is it doing now?"
• Watch for: Rapid image-hopping (Hannah's kaleidoscope), or the client inventing what they think should happen. Working: the image acquires its own direction and logic.

4.8 Stepping into the picture (entering as oneself)

• Purpose: The step that turns passive fantasy into active imagination. The ego enters the scene with its real reactions.
• When: Once the image is moving or a figure is present.
• Steps:
  1. The client places themselves in the scene as who they actually are, not an idealised or heroic self.
  2. They act and speak with full conscious attention, "as if the drama being enacted before your eyes were real" (CW 14 §753). Hannah adds: as you would in an important outer situation (pp. 20–22).
  3. They let real reactions show: fear, shame, hesitation. Hannah's Edward has no heroics (pp. 35–36).
  4. Between their own moves, they empty again and receive what the scene does next (Hannah p. 20).
• Example language (illustrative): "You've been watching the old woman at the well. Now you are there too. What do you feel standing there, and what do you want to do?"
• Watch for: Spectator mode. Jung compared the person who only looks at the pictures to the foolish Parsifal (Jung Lexicon). Watch also for an omnipotent ego that rewrites the scene. Jung told Christiana Morgan to enter as her own critical self and "force out" the kernel of truth (1926 letter, via Shamdasani). Working: the client is affected and the scene responds to them.

4.9 Dialogue with inner figures (spoken or written)

• Purpose: The core of the confrontation. Ego and unconscious figure exchange views as two persons do.
• When: A personified figure appears, such as the shadow (usually first, Hannah p. 7), anima/animus, a wise figure or an animal.
• Steps:
  1. Address the figure directly. "Say what you have to say to that figure and listen to what he or she has to say" (Layard letter 1947).
  2. Write it down as dialogue: the other's voice, then the ego's answer from its own standpoint (CW 8 §186, via Shamdasani).
  3. Treat the figure as a person who exists ("Treat her as a person", Layard letter).
  4. Ask who it is and what it wants, and weigh what it says (Hannah p. 19).
  5. Be friendly but firm. Disagree where your values require it (Hannah pp. 6, 22).
• Example language (illustrative): "Ask him his name and why he is blocking the road. Write his answer exactly as it comes, even if it's rude. Then write your reply, honestly."
• Watch for: The ego simply obeying a voice as oracle, or the ego putting words in the figure's mouth. Figures that "agree with everything" suggest the ego is scripting [synthesis]. Working: the figure says unexpected things, and the client's position shifts or sharpens.

4.10 Giving it form: writing, painting, sculpture, movement, music

• Purpose: Von Franz's stage 3 and Jung's "creative formulation". It fixes the material so it cannot sink back and makes it an object the ego can relate to.
• When: During or right after each episode. Choose the medium by the client's type (CW 8): visual, audio-verbal, or motor and plastic.
• Steps by medium:
  • Writing: record scenes and dialogues verbatim. Writing stories about "other people" is an indirect route (Hannah pp. 16–17). Use audio-verbal "automatic" writing for those who hear rather than see (CW 8).
  • Painting or drawing: paint the image as it is, not as art. Jung painted extensively in The Red Book and Black Books. Jung: "by painting himself he gives shape to himself" (via Wikipedia).
  • Clay or sculpture: for people whose hands "know" (CW 8, plastic expression).
  • Movement or dance: let the body move the image or impulse, repeat the movement until it can be remembered, then draw or describe it (Hannah p. 18). Chodorow, a dance therapist, developed this line [source: appliedjung review; Chodorow's own method [uncertain]].
  • Music: listed by later teachers (appliedjung) [uncertain: not in Jung texts].
• Example language (illustrative): "Don't worry whether it's good. Paint the snake exactly as it showed itself, with the colour it actually had."
• Watch for: Aesthetic perfectionism, which Jung warned overvalues formulation over meaning. Working: the product carries feeling and reveals details that weren't noticed in the imagining.

4.11 Sandplay as a form of active imagination

• Purpose: Concrete, three-dimensional imaginal work for children, non-verbal adults and clients who struggle with inner visualisation.
• When: The therapist is trained in it. Sandplay is Dora Kalff's separate method with its own training. Shamdasani notes Jung's spirit of engaging one's own figures may be "more alive" in sandplay.
• Steps: Not specified in the sources [uncertain]. Generic sandplay procedure belongs to Kalff's method and is outside this guide.
• Watch for: Using the tray for interpretation-heavy work, which runs against the non-interference principle [synthesis].

4.12 Letters to inner figures (in place of the analyst)

• Purpose: To route dependence away from the therapist toward the "inner physician".
• When: The client wants the therapist to answer every question, or a strong idealising transference is forming.
• Steps: Jung had Tina Keller write her questions "as if they were letters to me" and not send them (via Shamdasani). The client writes the question, waits, and writes whatever answer comes. [synthesis: then bring both to session for reflection]
• Example language (illustrative): "Write this question as a letter to whoever in you might know, not to me. Leave a space, and see what answer gets written."
• Watch for: Writing answers the client thinks the therapist would give. Working: the answers have a tone distinct from the client's and from the therapist's.

4.13 Balancing formulation and understanding (the reflective layer)

• Purpose: The second half of Jung's coming-to-terms. It extracts meaning without replacing experience.
• When: After episodes have been recorded. Do it separately, not during the imagining. Jung did not interpret during his fantasies (via Shamdasani).
• Steps:
  1. Reread the record. Note what is striking, surprising or affect-laden.
  2. Ask what attitude of the ego the figures compensate.
  3. Amplify with personal associations, and only then, sparingly, with mythological parallels [synthesis; amplification is standard Jungian method, applied here by me].
  4. In The Red Book, Jung later elaborated about 35 episodes into a second, reflective layer of general principles (Shamdasani). A client can likewise write a later reflection beneath each episode.
• Example language (illustrative): "Reading it now, what surprises you about what the beggar said? Which part of you has been refusing to hear that?"
• Watch for: Over-intellectualisation, which Jung warned overvalues understanding, and premature closure of meaning. Working: understanding opens a next step, not just a label.

4.14 Ethical confrontation (Auseinandersetzung)

• Purpose: Von Franz's stage 4. The ego brings its moral and practical values into the exchange and takes responsibility for its response.
• When: Whenever figures make demands, offer temptations, threaten or propose action.
• Steps:
  1. Have the client state their own values to the figure. Not submission and not dismissal (Hannah p. 22).
  2. Weigh the figure's claim. What is legitimate in it, and what would be destructive if acted out literally?
  3. Negotiate. Seek a position that honours both sides. This is the "third" (CW 8).
  4. Ask what follows for conduct.
• Example language (illustrative): "She wants you to quit everything and go. Tell her what you value in your present life, and ask what she actually needs from you."
• Watch for: Inflation (the ego identifies with a powerful figure), the power principle (insight used to control others; Hannah p. 11), and literal acting out. Working: the client holds both positions and a new, realistic attitude emerges.

4.15 Grounding and closing an episode

• Purpose: Return safely to ordinary consciousness and the outer world.
• When: At the end of every episode, and immediately if affect overwhelms.
• Sources: Jung and Hannah give no closing protocol [uncertain]. Robert Johnson stresses having someone "who knows how to get you back to the ordinary earth" and a friend to call if you lose your bearings (Inner Work, pp. 17–18 approx.). The steps below are [synthesis].
• Steps:
  1. End deliberately. Have the ego take leave of the figure ("I'll come back to this"), rather than drifting out.
  2. Write or draw the record immediately (Hannah p. 18).
  3. Orient: eyes open, name five things in the room, feel feet and seat, and say the date and what comes next today.
  4. Do a brief physical act such as standing, stretching, drinking water or walking.
  5. In session, debrief for at least 10 minutes before the client leaves. Check affect and their plan for the evening.
  6. Contain the record (closed notebook, put away) so it isn't revisited compulsively.
• Example language (illustrative): "Let the scene stay where it is for now. You can return to it. Feel the chair under you. Look around the room and tell me three things you see."
• Watch for: Lingering derealisation, intrusive continuation of the images into ordinary life, and sleep disruption. Any of these means reduce frequency or stop (§5). Working: the client feels present, and the material feels significant but held.

4.16 Applying it to life (incarnation, ritual act)

• Purpose: The fifth stage in von Franz's sequence as taught, and Jung's "ethical obligation". The reunion of insight with the body and life corresponds to CW 14's second stage.
• When: After an episode yields a demand, insight or reconciliation.
• Steps:
  1. Translate the insight into one concrete behaviour this week: a conversation, a change of routine, making amends or grieving (appliedjung Module 8).
  2. Where no direct action fits, use a small symbolic act: painting the image, keeping an object, writing and burning a letter (appliedjung Module 8, after Johnson). Johnson names this step "rituals" (Inner Work, table of contents).
  3. Never act out the fantasy's literal content, such as confronting people destructively, breaking relationships, or using drink or drugs (appliedjung Module 8).
• Example language (illustrative): "The old man asked you to stop rushing. What is one small, real thing that would honour that, something you can do by Thursday?"
• Watch for: Grand gestures or impulsive life changes justified by "the unconscious told me". Working: small, sustainable changes, with the next episodes responding to them.

4.17 The therapist's handling of reported material

• Purpose: Support the process without contaminating it.
• When: The client brings records to session.
• Steps:
  1. Receive the material respectfully. Ask whether it was done and how it went.
  2. Keep commentary minimal. Jung rarely commented on Hannah's active imaginations, to avoid influencing them, and intervened only to flag misuse (Hannah pp. 12–13).
  3. Flag misuse: passivity, ego-scripting, living persons, power motives, inflation, flooding.
  4. Keep working the dreams in parallel. Jung asked Hannah for dreams rather than active imaginations (pp. 12–13).
  5. Treat working with active imagination and the resistances to it as part of the analyst's "elementary equipment" (Layard letter, Oct 1947, via Shamdasani).
• Example language (illustrative): "I don't want to put my stamp on what happened there. It's yours. I only want to check one thing: when the soldier raised his sword, were you still in the scene, or watching from the outside?"
• Watch for: Your own urge to interpret or to admire. Working: the client increasingly trusts their own process and needs the therapist less.

4.18 The analyst's own active imagination

• Purpose: To work through an impasse or a countertransference reaction.
• When: The analyst is stuck with a client, or affected in a way they cannot resolve.
• Source: Jung told Morgan that a vision during an impasse with a patient was "immensely helpful" (1926, via Shamdasani). No procedure is given beyond Jung's general method [uncertain].
• Steps: [synthesis] Do it outside sessions, on your own time. Start from the affect the client evokes in you (§4.4), record it, and take it to supervision. Don't share content with the client unless clearly useful.
• Watch for: Using it to fantasise about the real client, which breaches the living-persons rule. Work with the inner image the client evokes, not with the person.

4.19 Alternative teaching structure: Johnson's four steps (secondary)

• Purpose: A lay-accessible scaffold for clients doing it at home.
• Content: Robert Johnson (Inner Work, 1986) names (1) the Invitation, (2) the Dialogue, (3) the Values, and (4) the Rituals. These map onto von Franz's stages 2 to 5. [source: table of contents only] [uncertain: Johnson's detailed instructions]
• Use: Give it as a handout frame together with the safety rules (§5.1, §4.15).

5. Handling problems

5.1 Contraindications and screening (psychosis risk, fragile ego)

• What the sources say:
  • Jung: the method "is not entirely without danger" because it may carry the patient too far from reality (CW 9i, via Wikipedia).
  • Hannah: misuse, pursued for indulgence rather than as disciplined work, can release forces leading to a psychotic episode. The main danger is panic and being swamped (Hannah pp. 5–6).
  • Jung on latent psychosis: whether it breaks out depends on whether a person can withstand panic or the chronic strain of conflict, "a little bit too much" (CW 3 §520, via carljungdepthpsychologysite).
  • The psychotic person is swallowed by material that the active imaginer integrates (Jung 1955/56, via the Red Book introduction).
  • Fordham argued it can promote psychopathology in some patients (via Wikipedia).
• Do not use, or defer [synthesis, operationalising the above]:
  • Current or past psychotic disorder, or a prodrome.
  • Bipolar disorder in or near a manic or mixed phase.
  • Severe dissociative disorder, or depersonalisation as a main complaint.
  • Borderline-level organisation with poor reality testing.
  • Acute PTSD with intrusive imagery.
  • Active substance misuse.
  • Acute suicidality or crisis. Use standard risk assessment and stabilise first; this is not a crisis tool.
  • Severe sleep deprivation.
  • A collapsing outer life.
• Use with modification [synthesis]: for fragile but stable clients, offer short, accompanied in-session episodes with eyes open, external media (clay, drawing) rather than closed-eye imagery, a strong closing (§4.15) and longer intervals.

5.2 Overwhelm and flooding during an episode

• Signs: Escalating panic, a sense of being swallowed or merged with a figure, loss of the "I" in the scene, or dissociation.
• Response [synthesis, grounded in Hannah's "panic" warning]:
  1. Have the ego step back to observer position, or leave the scene.
  2. Open the eyes, orient and ground (§4.15).
  3. Externalise by drawing or naming the image on paper.
  4. Agree to pause the practice and resume only with a reduced dose.
  5. If perceptual changes persist outside sessions, stop and assess for emerging psychosis or dissociation.
• Illustrative: "Stop the scene. Open your eyes. You're here with me in this room, it's Tuesday afternoon. Feel your feet. We'll leave the figure where it is."

5.3 Nothing comes (blankness)

• Source: Hannah says to persist until the conscious "cramp" relaxes (p. 17). Jung advised against "cramped attention" (via Shamdasani).
• Response:
  • Switch the entry point: mood (§4.4), dream (§4.5), or a picture (§4.6, the railway poster).
  • Switch the medium to your client's type: drawing, clay or movement for non-visualisers (CW 8). Many clients are auditory or motor rather than visual [synthesis].
  • Lower the performance pressure and shorten the attempt.

5.4 Passive "cinema" (watching without engaging)

• Hannah p. 21; Jung's foolish Parsifal (Jung Lexicon).
• Response: Prompt the ego's entry (§4.8). Ask what the client feels and wants to say, and require written dialogue.

5.5 Ego-scripting and wish-fulfilment

• Sign: The fantasy delivers what the client wants and figures agree with everything. Hannah warns of regression and wishful thinking and advises checking whether the ego is steering (pp. 12, 35).
• Response: Return to the starting image. Ask "what happened that you didn't choose?" and invite the figure's objection [synthesis].

5.6 Kaleidoscope (image-hopping)

• Hannah p. 21; "impatient jumping" (Layard letter).
• Response: Choose one image and return to it each time. Slow down and record each change before moving on.

5.7 Frightening or hostile figures

• Source: Hostility toward figures makes them threatening, so be friendly (Hannah p. 6). The shadow usually comes first (p. 7).
• Response: Stay in the scene only within tolerance. Ask the figure what it wants. Hold your own standpoint calmly, and retreat if overwhelmed (§5.2). Don't "kill" or banish figures as a technique [synthesis]. Banishing defeats the dialogue.

5.8 Inflation and taking voices as oracles

• Signs: The client feels chosen, special or omniscient, quotes figures as authorities, or makes big decisions on their say-so.
• Response: Remind them that voices are judged by what they say (Hannah p. 19) and that the ego keeps its standpoint (p. 22). Pause the practice if grandiosity grows. Screen for hypomania [synthesis].

5.9 Living persons in the fantasy and manipulative motives

• Source: Don't bring living people into the fantasy. If tempted, stop and re-examine the motive (Hannah p. 12). Von Franz also forbade this [uncertain: her text].
• Response: When a known person appears, ask what quality of the client they embody, and then work with that inner figure, not the person. Name the power motive if present (Hannah p. 11).

5.10 Literal acting out

• Response: Separate the inner meaning from the outer act (appliedjung Module 8). Before any significant life step, require a waiting period and discussion in therapy [synthesis].

5.11 Non-adherence (not practising)

• Source: Jung saw willingness as a test of seeking independence versus dependence (Hannah p. 12).
• Response [synthesis]: Explore what the reluctance protects. It may be fear, shame or wanting the therapist to do it. Reduce the dose to five minutes, or offer a medium that suits the client. Accept that some clients are not suited to it, and continue with dream work instead. Don't pressure; the method requires willingness.

5.12 Dependence and transference

• Signs: The client brings fantasies for the therapist, or figures resemble the therapist.
• Response: Use letters to inner figures (§4.12). Keep commentary minimal (§4.17). Jung warned that reliance on analysts can produce an unwholesome dissociation of opposites (Layard letter, via Shamdasani).

5.13 Ruptures

• Typical cause [synthesis]: The therapist interprets or evaluates the material, so the client feels intruded upon or judged. Or the client was flooded after a session the therapist encouraged.
• Response [synthesis]: Acknowledge your part directly, return ownership of the material to the client, and re-contract on pacing and safety.
• Illustrative: "I think I said too much about your drawing. It's your image, and I'd rather hear what it means to you."

5.14 Aesthetic or intellectual one-sidedness

• Source: CW 8 warns against overvaluing either creative formulation or understanding.
• Response: For the artist type, require the dialogue and reflection layer (§4.13). For the intellectual type, require rough, unpolished painting or movement and postpone interpretation.

5.15 Trauma material

• Note: Not addressed in the sources [synthesis].
• Response: If traumatic memories rather than symbolic images surface, stop and shift to trauma-focused stabilisation and processing methods. Active imagination is not an exposure technique. Resume only when the client can stay with symbolic material without re-experiencing.

Sources

Sources:

• Jung's Practice of the Image (Shamdasani), UCL Discovery
• Encounters with the Soul (Hannah), Internet Archive full text, ch. 1–2
• Inner Work (Johnson), Internet Archive full text, partial
• Active Imagination (Tozzi), IAAP
• Jung: Imagination, Pacifica Graduate Institute LibGuide
• Carl Jung on Active Imagination, Jung Lexicon
• Psychosis quotations, Carl Jung Depth Psychology
• Jung on the Transcendent Function, Jungian Center
• Mundus Imaginalis Module 8, Applied Jung
• Mundus Imaginalis Module 2, Applied Jung
• Jung on Active Imagination: key readings (review), Applied Jung
• Active imagination, Wikipedia

Books cited (primary texts were cited via the pages above unless noted; not drawn on in full):

• Jung, C. G. (1916/1958). The transcendent function. CW 8.
• Jung, C. G. (1955–56). Mysterium Coniunctionis. CW 14.
• Jung, C. G. (2009). The Red Book: Liber Novus (ed. S. Shamdasani).
• Chodorow, J. (Ed.) (1997). Jung on Active Imagination.
• von Franz, M.-L. (1980). On active imagination. In I. F. Baker (Ed.), Methods of Treatment in Analytical Psychology [uncertain].
• Hannah, B. (1981). Encounters with the Soul: Active Imagination as Developed by C. G. Jung.
• Johnson, R. A. (1986). Inner Work.
• Adler, G. (Ed.) (1973). C. G. Jung Letters, Vol. 1 (letters to Layard, 1947).