Active imagination is Jung’s most distinctive practice — and the most easily misunderstood. It is not daydreaming, where you direct the show, nor passive fantasy, where you drift. It is a genuine dialogue with the autonomous figures of the psyche.
The method is simple to describe: settle, invite an image or figure to appear (often one from a dream or a strong mood), then let it act and speak on its own. You respond honestly, as you would to a real other — and you take what it says seriously, even when it surprises or unsettles you.
Two cautions keep it safe and fruitful. First, keep your grounded adult self present; you are in dialogue, not swept away. Second, give it form — write the exchange, draw it, move it. Recording honors the encounter and keeps it from evaporating.
Done with respect, active imagination can reconcile inner opposites that thinking alone cannot touch.
Invite one inner figure to appear. Ask it a single honest question and write down its reply.
Who in your inner world has been trying to get your attention?
Go deeper · Robert A. Johnson, “Inner Work”
Practice this in the app — free ✦