Active Imagination and the emerging images in Junguian Art Therapyol

Abstract

This paper investigates the process of the generation of images in art therapy through the active imagination technique, a clinical and therapeutic tool established by Carl G. Jung. It includes the production generated by artists who act as the facilitators of significant emerging images for a particular historical moment, and focuses attention on elements that the collective unconscious is still unaware of, thus generating artworks that have come to be known as visionary art. It also reviews many significant concepts theorized by Jung and many of his contemporaries, differentiating active imagination from the waking dream method.   When discussing the treatment of the emerging images, it focuses on Jung´s experiences with his inner world as they appear in the Black Books and later on in the Red Book, the treatment of two patients, i.e., Christiana Morgan and Kristine Mann and the writing of a seminal paper for all art therapists, The Transcendent Function and the use of active imagination in my own practice as an art therapist.