An edited extract from ‘Waking Dreams: Imagination in Psychotherapy & Everyday Life’ by Allan Frater, which appeared in the December 2023 AAP Psychosynthesis Quarterly.
In the psychosynthesis literature characters of imagination are ‘inner figures’ approached through an ‘inner programme’ or ‘inner dialogue’, resulting in an ‘inner integration’. And yet, when we look at what actually happens in therapy rooms, there is also very often an implicit experience of such imagined characters, not as inner-figures, but as an imaginal presence in the normal everyday world. Whether perceived in a teddy-bear, doll, drawing or in a landscape of imagination during a waking dream, such figures are sometimes interacted with as-if they are independent and autonomous others, not at all ‘inner figures’ or ‘parts of us.’ But the understanding of imagination as ‘inner’ does little to address this activity of imagery in the world.
I took advantage of a research project during my psychotherapy training to explore this gap between theoretical understanding and actual clinical application. The title of my project was ‘The Imagination Imagined’. It aimed to find out how a therapist’s theoretical assumptions regarding imagination qualitatively shape the client’s imaginative experience. A series of interviews were conducted with psychosynthesis psychotherapists, a key part of which invited them to share how they might have responded to the following clinical situation, which was based upon a composite from my own practice:
A client reports how he had been looking out a train window, more daydreaming than noticing the countryside slipping past, and how on turning back into the carriage he saw on the chair opposite him a little boy whom he recognised as his younger self, quietly sitting and looking back at him.
The client knew it was not a physical little boy and yet it, “did not feel made-up” and had “a sort of reality.”
If we take it for granted that this client is psychologically stable, how might you have responded?
The results of the interviews fell broadly into two groups. In the first group, the understanding of the ‘little boy’ was an internalisation of the client’s actual historical ‘little boy’. In other words, the ‘little boy’ on the chair was a projection of a memory, an experiential picture from childhood that properly lived inside him. In other words, imagination was assumed to be a psychological interiority and this first group would have offered this inner-imagination understanding to the client in an unqualified manner, using terms such as ‘sub-personality’ and ‘Inner Child’ or the phrase ‘that child part of you’ as an opening to reflect upon the historical origins of the ‘little boy.’
In using an ‘inner imagination’ language with the client, this first group were communicating a belief system or psychological theory arguably unrelated to the observed phenomena. A belief systems not of spirits or ancestors, but one in which images are: ‘inner’ and ‘subjective’; representations of the ‘real’ (in this case, actual physical events from history) but not ‘real’ in themselves; only of secondary importance to tracing them back to what they represent in the ‘real’ and ‘objective’ world.
This inner-imagination understanding is the predominant presentation across the literature of not just Psychosynthesis, but also other orientations which focus upon image-work, most of whom, while taking imagination seriously show very little consideration as to what it is phenomenologically. As the psychotherapist Mary Watkins writes: “It is ironic that those psychologies which seem to give the greatest respect to the imaginal have not inquired into the subject of what they have imagined of imagining.”
I was therefore not surprised that this first group of interviewees held an unqualified inner imagination position, which reflects the assumptions within Psychosynthesis theory and also the common-sense and dictionary definition understanding of imagination in mainstream culture. However, the second group of interviewees described an alternative way of working. In their response to the client, they would have deliberately avoided any kind of abstract language such as ‘Inner-Child’ or ‘sub-personality’, or any search for the historical origins of the imagined character. Instead, these therapists straightforwardly acknowledged the reality of the character by matching the ‘little boy’ language of the client and inviting a simple non-jargonistic description of the experience.
This second group were consciously avoiding inner/outer and unreal/real thinking and language. It was understood by this group that such a dualistic framing placed a layer of abstract terminology over the client’s experience, moving the therapy towards a rational thinking-about analysis rather than an experiential exploration, which these therapists valued highly as a primary means towards healing and transformation.
One of the therapists in this group spoke of how, “You step in and explore: what does he look like, how do you feel towards him.”; another spoke of the importance of “the client connecting with their imaginal sense, rather than being a detective and tracking down something that happened in the past,” while another spoke of the therapy as, “a discussion of what makes the world a magical, meaningful place…which needs to be opened, validated, explored, so that the client can have it more consciously”. In refraining from inner-imagination theoretical language the client’s imaginal attention, far from being diverted from the activity of images in everyday life, was being actively enhanced.
The two groups were separated theoretically as well as methodologically. It was not just a subtle question of language games. How these therapists understood imagination mattered. While none of the second group were able to succinctly describe an actual theoretical position on the reality or otherwise of the ‘little boy’ image, they nevertheless all recognised there was more to it than the inner-imagination understanding, which they took much more provisionally than the first group. In other words, the second group made a distinction between theory and practice, ideas and experiences, whereas the first group were conflating them together. I concluded it was their theoretical agnosticism towards imagination that allowed this second group to convey an interest in the client’s actual imaginative experience rather than forcing the ‘little boy’ into an abstracted inner-imagination belief system.
The inner imagination definition is best understood as a metaphor rather than an actual description of what happens when we imagine. Images are only “as if” but not really inside us in an actual inner place or realm easily separated from normal everyday life, in the way photographs are inside a smartphone. In other words, imagination is both inner and outer. As the late maverick psychiatrist R.D. Laing wrote:
“This distinction between outer and inner . . . is a distinction between different modalities of experience, namely, perception (as outer) in contrast to imagination, etc. (as inner). But perception, imagination, phantasy, reverie, dreams, memory are simply different modalities of experience, none more “inner” or “outer” than any others. Imagination is neither entirely inner or outer.”1
However, with overuse and a lack of alternative ideas, the difference between inner imagination theory and actual experience can be easily missed. While an ‘inner imagination’ theory is not wrong, and can be helpful to step back and gain perspective, it does tend towards a more analytical thinking about images which eclipses the quality of attention needed for imagining. As the following four limitations show, inner imagination assumptions are poorly aligned to what image-based therapists most value in experiential work.
Dualistic Imagining:
The inner imagination assumes a dualism of inner and outer. Images have a proper location within and an improper projection onto the world, the limitation of which can lead to a preoccupation with a withdrawal of projections. In extreme cases of fantastical delusions, this may have some merit; however, in less disturbed individuals (that is, most people) the attempt to fit the complexity of imaginative experience into neat inner/outer categories is rarely satisfactory or clear-cut.
Rationalistic Imagining:
An inner imagination approach turns images into ideas, rather than working with them as imaginative experiences. Time and energy are put into wondering about where images have come from, to whom they belong, what they represent, and whether or not they are projections to be withdrawn to a source within. All of which is perhaps interesting, and sometimes useful, but needs to be recognised as a rational thinking-about images at odds with the commonly understood importance of experiential work in psychological transformation.
Narcissistic Imagining:
Inner imagination obviously focuses attention inwards: images are assumed to be personal and subjective, perhaps even something we have made up and have a certain control over. The danger of which is a narcissistic self-absorption, in which the ego becomes identified as “the-person-doing-the-imagining”, a distortion that serves to further bolster and suit the needs of this egoic identity, moving away from the more relational imaginative engagement that might challenge egoic identification.
Mechanistic Imagining:
If imagination is ‘inner’ and we are somehow on the outside peering in, like a mechanic working on a car engine, then it is no surprise the images inside this machine imagination are theorised “as if” mechanical “objects” or “parts”, and change is the moving around of these image objects. However, this mechanistic framework offers little to support therapists in further understanding how imagination seems to create new ideas, identities, and ways of being, a process that rarely proceeds in a linear, predictable, and controllable mechanical fashion.
The inner imagination is at best a partial understanding, ill-suited to the needs of psychotherapeutic work. What is needed is a much closer match between theory and practice. An understanding aligned to the complexity of imagining and its place in psychotherapy and everyday life. One which points towards the quality of imaginal perception itself rather than thinking-about images. A joined-up imagination that brings self and world together not further apart. And a theory of change that embraces the human irregularity of dreams rather than the fantasy of a mechanical imagining.
To read the full article, click here.
To read the introduction and first chapter of Waking Dreams, click here.
If you would like to book for Allan Frater’s upcoming Waking Dreams CPD course, you can see upcoming course dates on the Trust’s Event Calendar.
References: 1, R.D.Laing, The Politics of Experience