You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
Schaverien's statement, ‘Active imagination, like transference, mobilizes the psyche’ (2005, p. 127), opened an engrossing paper, ‘Art, dreams and active imagination: a post-Jungian approach to transference and the image’ in Volume 50, 2, of The Journal of Analytical Psychology (JAP). We are pleased to see a featured article in JAP on active imagination.
Jung's definition of the clinical use of active imagination includes the patient's experience and the ‘plastic form’ (1947, para. 402) selected by the patient. Schaverien defines active imagination differently by distinguishing the patient's experience from the medium of its expression: ‘It is the experience of the person, rather than the medium that is active imagination’ (p. 128). By contrast Jung (ibid., para. 402) writes: ‘Image and meaning are identical; and as the first takes shape, so the latter becomes clear’. He includes both expressive product (image) and experience (meaning) as essential. Without following up on her evocative re-definition, Schaverien turns to the influence of active imagination on the transference and countertransference. This limits the scope of the article, while rendering an unnecessarily restrictive understanding of active imagination.
Schaverien states the article's main theme: ‘It is the qualitative variation between different forms of active imagination that emerge within the transference and countertransference dynamic that is the topic of this present article’ (p. 136). The text is unclear as to whether the paper's focus also intends to define active imagination within those limits as well. Such delimitation of the definition and range of active imagination reduces the breadth of the broader delineation set down by Jung as well as the wider clinical uses of active imagination for analytic and synthetic work.
Schaverien's article stimulated our reflection about sandplay and analysis as a ‘spark for active imagination’ (p. 128) and its influence on the transference and countertransfe