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Imaginology: The Jungian Study of The Imagination
by Michael Vannoy Adams
In The Fantasy Principle: Psychoanalysis of the Imagination, I state that “Jungian psychology is what I call imaginology, and Jungian psychologists are imaginologists” (Adams 2004: 7). Imaginology is the study of the imagination, and imaginologists are students of the imagination. Other psychologists study drives, the ego, objects, or the self. Jungian psychologists study images. The emphasis on the imagination is what is unique about Jungian psychology, which is an imaginal psychology.
“Anxiety” is one of the most important technical terms in psychoanalysis. “The ego,” Freud says, “is the actual seat of anxiety” (SE 19: 57). According to Freud, “It is always the ego’s attitude of anxiety which is the primary thing and which sets repression going” (SE 20: 109) – or, more generally, I would say, which sets defenses going. Freud says that “anxiety is a reaction of the ego to danger” (SE 20: 129). That is, the ego reacts anxiously – and then repressively or defensively – to what it regards as dangerous. Jung says: “In this way, as Freud rightly says, we turn the ego into a “seat of anxiety,” which it would never be if we did not defend ourselves against ourselves so neurotically” (CW 10: 170, par. 360). In a very real sense, every neurosis is an anxiety neurosis.
What Jung means when he says that “we defend ourselves against ourselves” is that the anxious ego neurotically defends itself against the unconscious. As a practitioner of imaginal psychology, I prefer to say, instead, that the anxious ego-image neurotically defends itself against non-ego images. As James Hillman says of the ego, “it too is an image” (1979: 102). “Ego” means “I.” The ego-image is the “I”-image. It is who or how “I” imagine myself to be. The psyche – or the imagination – comprises an ego-image and a variety of non-ego images.
In effect, I advocate that Jungians adopt a new terminology that I believe would be advantageous. The terms ego-image and non-ego images emphasize that, as Jung says, “the psyche consists essentially of images” (CW 8: 325, par. 618). As I define “unconscious,” it is what the ego-image is unconscious of. Ironically, it is not the unconscious that is unconscious. Rather, it is the ego-image that is unconscious, and what it is unconscious of are non-ego images.
To the extent that the ego-image is unconscious of non-ego images, it tends to react anxiously and defensively because it regards them as dangerous.
The function of non-ego images is transformative. Non-ego images are what I call “images of transformation.” They attempt to contact and impact the ego-image in an effort to transform it. The ego-image, however, regards non-ego images as dangerous precisely because they are transformative. That is, non-ego images are only ostensibly dangerous, from the perspective of the ego-image. The ostensible danger that non-ego images pose is to the partial, prejudicial, or defective attitudes of the ego-image. Non-ego images present alternative perspectives on the attitudes of the ego-image. If the ego-image is not defensive but receptive, it may entertain these alternative perspectives seriously, consider them critically, and then either accept or reject them. How might the ego-image be less defensive and more receptive? It would have to be less anxious and, I would say, more curious about non-ego images.
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