Reverie and the Imagination in Jungian Analysis and Beyond by Joseph Cambray

The human imagination is one of our most distinct gifts as a species. Our creativity rests on this faculty, from our origins as tool makers, as artists from paleolithic cave and rock art to the present, as explorers of outer and inner worlds, as inventors from myths to agriculture, writing and into the modern age with all our cultural productions. In addition to the enormous contributions of the arts, all scientific and medical advancements have a core component of imaginative curiosity as a motive force.

When asked in an interview, “Then you trust more to your imagination than to your knowledge?” Albert Einstein famously replied: “I am enough of the artist to draw freely upon my imagination. Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world” (1929, 2015). Nevertheless, he certainly used knowledge to construct his scientific theories, recognized this as a hard-won value, often requiring much time, effort, and attention to obtain. Imagination by contrast is not bound by the rules of knowledge acquisition but is available to all as a part of our legacy. Einstein was linking it here to his intuition and, as a source of inspiration that could direct his scientific attention, opening it to the realm of possibilities and future developments.

There are multiple ways to use imagination, from creative expression, play, exploration, and problem-solving to expanding memory and personality development, including individuation. Some of these have disciplined approaches that can be revelatory to consciousness via the application of intuition in conjunction with imaginative productions. William James in his Varieties of Religious Experiences referred to this as the field of noetics: “…states of insight into depths of truth unplumbed by the discursive intellect. They are illuminations, revelations, full of significance and importance, all inarticulate though they remain; and as a rule they carry with them a curious sense of authority” (p. 312).

C.G. Jung developed the method of “active imagination” during his Red Book period, which has served as a valuable tool for exploration of the inner world for those who follow in his footsteps. With this method, he brought the imagination into a central position in human adult development, creating a pathway for the conscious mind to engage with the totality of the psyche, including the collective unconscious. This also brought into focus the noetic potential inherent in psychic reality. In subsequent years, Jung found confirmation for the value of his approach by looking to those alchemists who distinguished between mere fantasy and true imagination. As he notes in his 1935 Tavistock lectures:

I really prefer the term ‘imagination’ to ‘fantasy,’ because there is a difference between the two which the old doctors had in mind when they said that ‘opus nostrum,’ our work, ought to be done ‘per veram imaginationem et non phantasticam’ - by true imagination and not by a fantastical one (par. 396).

Jung’s journey into the imagination was inaugurated by several “waking dreams” in late 1913, in particular of Europe filling up with blood and refuse. These visions shocked and disturbed him, causing him to question his sanity but also leading him into the depths as he developed his engagement with the images through what he was to call active imagination. The deeper truth they held was not revealed for almost nine months, until August 1914, when the first World War broke out. Then Jung felt caught on the horns of a dilemma: was he undergoing a psychotic process or was he having visions of the future? As I have discussed elsewhere, he remained in the uncertainty of this dilemma for many years until he was able to articulate his hypothesis of synchronicity (Cambray, 2014).

Returning to Jung’s initial “waking dreams” we can now see and understand them as forms of reverie. Reverie is generally defined as mind-wandering that tends to occur spontaneously, without focused conscious awareness. We often dismiss or ignore these events as unwanted distractions or irrelevant intrusions into our waking thoughts. However, various groups have learned to attend to these seemingly random intrusions and discover value in them. For example, artists, from poets to painters, have learned to invite them in as curious guests to entertain. In a way, Jung was following in this tradition in deciding to embrace and explore what had initial shocked and dismayed him, rather than suppressing and ignoring these eruptions of the unconscious.

Neuroscientific research of the past 25 years has taught us to pay closer attention to such states of mind, identifying a set of brain loci involved in a coordinated network, the so-called “Default Mode Network” (DMN). This began with PET scans that were designed to compare the amount of energy (in the form of glucose) burned during “resting states” of mind (associated with daydreaming or reverie), compared to the energy consumed when engaged in difficult intellectual tasks. The surprising results showed that the energy consumption was nearly identical for both states (Raichle, et. al. 2001). Over the past quarter century, a great deal of research has gone into researching this network, exploring its functions in health and illness. A recent review states:

the DMN integrates and broadcasts memory, language, and semantic representations to create a coherent ‘internal narrative’ reflecting our individual experiences. This narrative is central to the construction of a sense of self, shapes how we perceive ourselves and interact with others, may have ontogenetic origins in self-directed speech during childhood, and forms a vital component of human consciousness (Menon, 2003).

The findings about the DMN highlight the importance of this aspect of mind and psyche that had been largely ignored by scientific psychology.

Psychoanalytic schools associated with the work of D.W. Winnicott and W. Bion have increasingly embraced and reconsidered the role of reveries in analytic practice. There is increasing evidence that attuning to our reveries can provide a portal of entry into what is activated or emerging in the unconscious intersubjective field of analysis. I wish to extend this now to include a Jungian perspective.

Noting the exact timing as well as the content of a reverie event occurring in analysis has shown that they may have a synchronistic quality. They appear unbidden at highly meaningful moments often indicative of something not yet being addressed but of vital importance to what is occurring in a psychotherapy. By appreciating their Kairos and content, which is often multimodal (visual, auditory, olfactory, kinesthetic, etc.), the noetic potential of the reveries can be realized and further the analytic process.

In addition, we can use reveries as a type of “disciplined distraction” in a variety of settings. For example, walks in nature often bring associative reveries to mind, which can help us connect to hidden or invisible aspects of our environment and even allow a form of “dialogue.”  Reveries are also at the heart of free play, and so embracing our capacity for them brings us closer the experiencing the wonder of the world, helping to re-enchant the world.

References

Cambray, Joseph. “Entrances and Exits,” in The Red Book: Reflections on C.G. Jung's Liber Novus. Edited by T. Kirsch and G. Hogenson. New York and London: Routledge, 2014.

Bite-Size Einstein: Quotations on Just About Everything from the Greatest Mind of the Twentieth Century. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1996

James, William. The Varieties of Religious Experience. Digreads.com. Available at www.digireads.com.

Jung C.G. The Symbolic Life. In Collected Works, Vol 18. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1980.

Menon, V. “20 Years of the Default Mode Network: A Review and Synthesis,” Neuron. 2023 Aug 16. (https://doi.org/10.1016/ j.neuron.2023.04.023)

Raichle, M. E., MacLeod, A. M., Snyder, A. Z., Powers, W. J., Gusnard, D. A., and Shulman, G. L. “A Default Mode of Brain Function.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 98(2), 676-682. (https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.98.2.676)