C. G. Jung promoted active imagination as the main technique of Analytical psychology to integrate the anima or the collective unconscious. His followers also did so. Nevertheless, there is little to no evidence, over the past century, that this technique might be effective in the individuation process. All we have is anecdotal evidence. When a scientific hypothesis is not proven effective during such a long time, one shall be aware of its questionable effectiveness.
Jung’s emphasis on the efficiency if his technique should be analyzed. He linked his two transcendent experiences to active imagination. This is the fundamental concept to his essay The Transcendent Function written in 1916 but only published in 1958. As is well known, active imagination is the process of identifying a feeling, letting it personify in imagination and interacting with it in an imaginary conversation. The Red Book, published in 2009, is primarily constituted with Jung’s active imaginations that he achieved from the late 1913. He wrote them down and he illuminated the text with his illustrations from 1915.
To understand Jung's misconception, we need to state a few things. Carl Jung was an INTJ. His dominant function Introverted Intuition shows continually in his written work where extroverted Thinking has the second place. Feeling and Sensation cognitive functions almost never occur.
Therefore, Jung’s cognitive functions were:
- Dominant Introverted Intuition
- Auxiliary Extroverted Thinking
- Tertiary Introverted Feeling
- Inferior Extroverted Sensing
We also know from Jung himself and the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), that humans generally develop only two functions: the dominant and the auxiliary functions. The latter being usually less developed than the dominant function.
Jung’s misinterpretation can be explained using cognitive functions. Although he thought that active imagination and the integration of the unconscious were the effective factors in his mystical experiences, what was really functioning was not the integration of the unconscious but the development of the cognitive functions that were undifferentiated. In doing active imagination, he was identifying, night after night, feelings and emotions in order to interact with them in imagination. By doing that, he was in fact working on his introverted Feeling function and bringing it to consciousness. We remember that Feeling was his tertiary function, a function that is usually undifferentiated. It is the development of his tertiary cognitive function that triggered his first transcendent experience.
His second mystical experience was not linked to the integration of the anima or the collective unconscious but to the elaboration of The Red Book. When in 1915, he started to write down his texts with gothic calligraphy and illuminate his Red Book with meticulous illustrations, he was, in fact, working on his inferior Sensation function. The manual task around that book is, without a doubt, a Sensation process. Without knowing it, Jung developed his undifferentiated cognitive functions. He seems to never have realized that it was the development of the four functions of orientation of consciousness that were the active and operational factors in his two mystical experiences.
Transcendent experiences have been known for a very long time. Mystics of all origins generally link them to a divine intervention but atheists also have those experiences. According to Jungian psychology, mystical experiences are signposts of the integration of the personal and collective unconscious during individuation. This is the main reason of his alchemical studies. That hypothesis does not explain why Christian mystics have those experiences without integrating unconscious contents. What is most probable is that those mystics have developed their third and fourth cogntive functions to access transcendent experiences.
The monastic rule ask for the sacrifice of all belongings both material and spiritual. When mystics follow scrupulously that rule, they sacrifice their cognitive identity or their ego cognitive functions. The sacrifice of the auxiliary function automatically trigger the development of its opposite. For example, if one sacrifice his Feeling auxiliary cognitive function, that provokes a deficiency in the judgment capacity. One will perceive with his Perception Intuition or Sensation dominant cognitive function but will refuse to use his judgment Feeling function. The natural process of consciousness of perceiving and judging will automatically cause the rise of the opposite judgment function: Thinking. When the tertiary cognitive function has reached the level if development of the auxiliary one, a numinous symbol of conjunction of opposites is produced by the psyche. This is what has been called a mystical experience.
As we have said ealier, the integration of the unconscious with active imagination has very little effect, if any, on individuation. Only ISTJs and INTJs could expect results because their tertiary function is introverted Feeling. Contrary to the general Jungian opinion, it is the development of cognitive functions that has the most effect on individuation. Integrating the unconscious has little effect on consciousness but adding cognitive functions is the most important step in the process to wholeness.
Jung and some of his interpreters promoted the idea that the alchemists were doing active imagination in front of their chemical experiments but this is a bending of alchemy to justify Analytical psychology’s main technique. Two reasons could be invoked to support the assertion that alchemist never did active imagination. First, the real alchemists never did the experiments that were in their grimoires. Their recipes were way too strange to be real chemical experiments.
Second, the words meditatio and imaginatio used by the alchemists have nothing to do with the fantastic imagination at work in active imagination. Alchemy demands true imagination, not fantastic imagination. Jung quotes the Rosarium in Psychology and Alchemy (CW 12):
«And take care that thy door be well and firmly closed, so that he who is within cannot escape, and—God willing—thou wilt reach the goal. Nature performeth her operations gradually; and indeed, I would have thee do the same: let thy imagination be guided wholly by nature. And observe according to nature, through whom the substances regenerate themselves in the bowels of the earth. And imagine this with true and not with fantastic imagination. » (par. 218)
The problem raised by this quote is that active imagination is fantastic imagination. It is the wandering of imagination in the realm of fantastic images. In contrast, true imagination is a meticulous exploration of all possibilities regarding a situation. It is what we would call, in today’s words, brainstorming. This is the kind of imagination that must be used in the alchemical process of developing cognitive functions.
For more,
https://jungianpsychologyexplained.blogspot.com/2025/02/mystical-experiences-in-alchemy.html
https://jungianpsychologyexplained.blogspot.com/2025/02/jungs-understanding-of-philosophers.html
https://www.academia.edu/119327280/Carl_Jungs_Second_Mystical_Experience_2024c_
