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Reply to the correspondence from Maria Ellen Chiaia and Lauren Cunningham about my article ‘Art, dreams and active imagination: a post-Jungian approach to transference and the image’ (Journal of Analytical Psychology, 50, 2)
I would like to thank the editors for offering me the opportunity to reply to the comment from colleagues in San Francisco. Firstly I was delighted that Maria Ellen Chiaia and Lauren Cunningham responded to my paper on ‘Art, dreams and active imagination’ and especially because of their extensive experience of sandplay.
Although I am broadly in agreement with Chiaia and Cunningham I would like to offer a few further points of clarification. My intention was not to limit the definition of the term active imagination but rather to widen it to embrace the transference, as well as to theorize it, in the context of present-day concerns. I agree with them (and Jung) that image and meaning are both essential in active imagination. My aim, in differentiating facets of active imagination, was to analyse processes about which basic assumptions are often made. To this end it is necessary to artificially separate the process of image making from the continuing influence of the art-work (the product). They seem to consider that I privilege consciousness over the unconscious, but if we follow the patient's lead this will have different priority at different times. Sometimes image and meaning come together in a profoundly symbolic manner, but my point is that this is not always the case. This is why I make the distinction between the diagrammatic and embodied image. The picture, made by Janet (p. 146), is an embodied image and moreover it is its own interpretation — no words can add to it. Therefore it is a profoundly symbolic element. In that case