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Active imagination was a psychological technique developed by Jung to explore unconscious fantasy material during waking states of consciousness. Active imagination was described by Jung as ‘a technical term referring to a method I have proposed for raising unconscious contents to consciousness’ (Jung 1937, p. 81). In order to understand the technique, it is first essential to define the terms conscious, and unconscious or subconscious (Oxford English Dictionary 1961). The terms conscious and unconscious or subconscious can generally be defined as what an individual is aware of and what he or she is not, but it is far more complex than that. The terms are multi-faceted and are used differently by various writers and researchers. For example, at a symposium in 1910, several psychological researchers came together to explore and attempt to define subconscious, or unconscious, phenomena. These researchers were Hugo Münsterberg (Professor of Psychology, Harvard College), Théodule Ribot (Professor of Psychology, Collège de France), Joseph Jastrow (Professor of Psychology, University of Wisconsin), Pierre Janet (Professor of Psychology, Collège de France), Morton Prince (Professor of Neurology, Tufts College Medical School), and Bernard Hart (Assistant Medical Officer, Long Grove Asylum, Epsom) (Prince 1910). At the end of the day, they were able to generate six definitions of subconscious phenomena, not one. A brief review of these definitions will reveal the variety and breadth of theories of the subconscious before the discussion of the techniques, or psychotherapeutics, which were used to work with unconscious materials.
According to Morton Prince, the editor of the symposium proceedings, the first definition of subconscious, or unconscious, phenomena was ‘to describe that portion of our field of consciousness which, at any given moment, is outside the focus of our attention; a region therefore, as it is conceived, of diminished attention’; the second definition is tha