A Response to George Bright

We are grateful to George Bright for his scholarly elaboration of the links between A Strange Fire and Jung's (2009) Red Book. His delineation of Jung's Layer 1 and Layer 2 material is particularly apt and illuminating.

We would, however, like to make two points in response. First, that he takes a rather narrow definition of active imagination. Whilst on some occasions Jung recommends actively engaging with the contents of the unconscious that emerge (Jung 1955-56, paras 706 & 753), hinting at the circumstances when this might be appropriate, he also describes active imagination as simply, ‘a sequence of fantasies produced by deliberate concentration … [and] elaborating the fantasy by observing the further fantasy material that adds itself to the fragment in a natural manner' (Jung 1939, para 101).

If Bright wishes to insist that a particular kind of engagement with the material is essential to the process, so be it; ultimately whether the text is taken to be a piece of active imagination, a meditation or simply ‘the text', is of little import. It is for these reasons that we suggested that the process is ‘akin to … active imagination' (Sagar & West 2016, p. 628). That said, there are clearly long passages in the Red Book where Jung is simply noting the fantasies that emerge ‘in a natural manner'. Furthermore, in the section that we quote from Septem Sermones, called to mind by A Strange Fire, Jung describes in some detail how, after a powerful and peculiar atmosphere had seized his household as if the house were ‘crammed full of spirits', the writing ‘began to flow out of me' (Jung 1963, p. 215-16). It is this ‘flowing out' that is characteristic of the way A Strange Fire emerged. (Incidentally, the image of the cat waiting at the mouse hole is not a part of the ‘active imagination' / text itself, but rather an attempt to describe the process by which it came about).

More importantly, however, A Strange Fire does not take for granted an ‘I' with which the contents of