Active imagination is one of Jung’s most original contributions to the understanding of the dynamics of the psyche and ways of working with the contents of the unconscious. His own self-experimentation in 1913 took the form of entering into waking fantasies and dialoguing with the characters that appeared. The development of this approach as a systematic way of engaging with the inner world marked the introduction of a new aim of psychotherapy that went beyond the cure of neuroses and made analytical psychology a distinct discipline of psychotherapy. This seminar will explore Jung’s method of active imagination, its practical applications, its historical context and its role in individuation.

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Katerina Sarafidou is the Head of Research(former Director) of the MSc Psychodynamics of Human Development run by Birkbeck College and the British Psychotherapy Foundation. She is an honorary member of the British Jungian Analytic Association and is carrying out academic research at the Warburg Institute on Jungian theory and German aesthetics. She runs a long-standing reading group at the British Psychotherapy Foundation (open to the public) and is one of the three founders of The Circle of Analytical Psychology, which offers a 2-year course of study on Jung’s Liber Novus.

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Jung, C.G.,  Collected Works Vol. 8, The transcendent function, paras.131-193

Jung, C.G., 2023. Lecture 8, 16 June 1939. In, “On Ignatius of Loyola’s Spiritual Exercises - ETH Lectures, vol 7 - 1939-1940” .pp. 3-15

Shamdasani, S, 2015. Jung's Practice of the Image. Journal of Sandplay Therapy, 24 (1) pp. 7-22

Further reading:

Miller, Jeffrey, 2004. The Transcendent Function. State University of New York.

Jung, C.G. Collected Works Vol 7, The technique of differentiation between the ego and the figures of the unconscious, paras 341-373

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