Fantasy Image

The fantasy image occupies a pivotal position in the depth-psychological corpus, functioning simultaneously as the primary datum of psychic life and as the medium through which soul makes itself known to consciousness. Jung established the conceptual foundation by situating the fantasy image on a spectrum between instinct and spirit — a continuum running from the infrared pole of bodily drive to the ultraviolet pole of pure form — thereby refusing any simple reduction of fantasy to either physiology or abstraction. Hillman extended and radicalized this position: in his account, all consciousness depends upon fantasy images, and the psyche presents itself directly through them; to encounter soul is, inescapably, to encounter fantasy images. This claim generates the central tension in the corpus. On one side stand those, like Corbin following Paracelsus, who insist that Imagination (with capital I) must be distinguished from mere fantasy, which is thought without foundation in nature. On the other side, Hillman and Moore dissolve that hierarchy by arguing that fantasy is precisely the mode in which soul inhabits the world and enlivens phenomena. A further tension concerns method: Jung’s active imagination and Edinger’s close reading of the Mysterium treat the fantasy image as something to be cultivated, noted, and morally confronted; Hillman’s archetypal psychology insists instead on dwelling within the image rather than translating it. Together these positions make the fantasy image the contested center of depth psychology’s epistemology of the unconscious.

In the library 20 passages

Jung places images and instinct on a psychological continuum, like a spectrum… ranging from an infrared end, the bodily action of instinctual desire, to the ultraviolet blue end of fantasy images. These fantasy images, according to Jung’s model, are the pattern and form of desire.

This passage articulates Jung’s foundational structural claim that fantasy images are not epiphenomenal but are the very form and patterning of instinct, positioning them at the ultraviolet pole of a psychic spectrum.

Hillman, James, Mythic Figures, 2007thesis

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if you are in search of soul, go first to your fantasy images, for that is how the psyche presents itself directly. All consciousness depends upon fantasy images.

Hillman, summarizing Jung, advances the strongest epistemic claim in the corpus: fantasy images are the primary and irreducible mode of psychic self-presentation, upon which all consciousness depends.

Hillman, James, Senex & Puer, 2015thesis

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try to find out what sort of fantasy-image it will produce, or what image expresses this mood. You then fix this image in the mind by concentrating your attention. Usually it will alter, as the mere fact of contemplating it animates it.

Edinger transmits Jung’s technical instruction on active imagination, showing the fantasy image as a dynamic object that animates under sustained attention and serves as the bridge between conscious and unconscious.

Edinger, Edward F., The Mysterium Lectures: A Journey Through C.G. Jung’s Mysterium Coniunctionis, 1995thesis

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the fantasy-image is merely seen and felt, it is two-dimensional, as it were, because he himself is not sufficiently involved. Therefore the fantasy remains a flat image, concrete and agitating perhaps, but unreal, like a dream.

Jung distinguishes passive reception from active engagement with the fantasy image, arguing that without the ego’s participation the image remains dimensionally impoverished and psychologically inoperative.

Jung, Carl Gustav, Two Essays on Analytical Psychology, 1953thesis

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Fantasy consists of the images and stories we have within us as we go about our daily affairs… the fantasy is the image, conscious or unconscious, lying beneath the behavior or permeating the action; and it is the fantasy that truly tells the expectations one has.

Moore, drawing on Hillman, defines the fantasy image as the invisible substrate of all behavior and experience, the genuine explanation of motivation that underlies observable action.

Moore, Thomas, The Planets Within: The Astrological Psychology of Marsilio Ficino, 1990thesis

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this Imaginatio must not be confused with fantasy. As Paracelsus already observed, fantasy, unlike Imagination, is an exercise of thought without foundation in nature, it is the ‘madman’s cornerstone.’

Corbin introduces a crucial counter-position, arguing through Paracelsus that fantasy images as ordinarily conceived must be distinguished from the true creative Imagination, which alone is ontologically grounded.

Corbin, Henry, Creative Imagination in the Sufism of Ibn Arabi, 1969thesis

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this Imaginatio must not be confused with fantasy. As Paracelsus already observed, fantasy, unlike Imagination, is an exercise of thought without foundation in nature, it is the ‘madman’s cornerstone.’

Corbin’s repeated insistence on this distinction marks the central tension in the corpus between fantasy as autonomous psychic event and Imagination as cosmologically grounded creative power.

Corbin, Henry, Alone with the Alone: Creative Imagination in the Sufism of Ibn Arabi, 1969thesis

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Ruland says, ‘Imagination is the star in man, the celestial or supercelestial body.’ This astounding definition throws a quite special light on the fantasy processes.

Jung cites the alchemical definition of imaginatio to illuminate the cosmic dignity that the tradition attributed to fantasy processes, situating them within a transpersonal frame.

Jung, Carl Gustav, Psychology and Alchemy, 1944supporting

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being and power and reality are invested in images. They are numinous because they are animated, soul-charged, whether shaped into external icons or imagined and spoken with in soul.

Hillman argues for the ontological parity of interior fantasy images and external cult icons, grounding the numinosity of fantasy images in their animation rather than in abstract transcendence.

Hillman, James, Healing Fiction, 1983supporting

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Jung’s resuscitation of images was a return to soul and what he calls its spontaneous symbol formation, its life of fantasy (which, as he notes, is inherently tied with polytheism).

Hillman situates Jung’s reclamation of fantasy images within a historical iconophilic tradition, linking the psyche’s spontaneous image-production to irreducible polytheistic multiplicity.

Hillman, James, Peaks and Vales: The Soul/Spirit Distinction as Basis for the Differences between Psychotherapy and Spiritual Discipline, 1975supporting

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Fantasy, an aspect of idolum, holds a kind of conception called ‘intention’, which can be stored in the memory. Ficino observes that ‘the fantasy is full of the individual forms of things.’

Moore uses Ficino’s faculty psychology to show fantasy images as carriers of intentional content stored in memory, providing a Renaissance Neoplatonic genealogy for depth psychology’s regard for the image.

Moore, Thomas, The Planets Within: The Astrological Psychology of Marsilio Ficino, 1990supporting

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Fantasy, an aspect of idolum, holds a kind of conception called ‘intention’, which can be stored in the memory. Ficino observes that ‘the fantasy is full of the individual forms of things.’

The parallel 1982 text establishes the same Ficinian grounding for the epistemological centrality of fantasy images in Renaissance and depth-psychological thought.

Moore, Thomas, The Planets Within: The Astrological Psychology of Marsilio Ficino, 1982supporting

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fantasy… is the sense of the senses, the most general sense organ. It is also the primary body of the soul… fantasy is a more divine perception, linked to the soul.

This hermetic passage, transmitted through Jung’s seminar, characterizes fantasy as the soul’s primary perceptual organ — more comprehensive than sense perception and analogous to a spiritual faculty.

Jung, C.G., Dream Interpretation Ancient and Modern: Notes from the Seminar Given in 1936-1941, 2014supporting

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Let an unconscious fantasy image arise; Give it some form of expression; and Ethical confrontation.

Von Franz’s staged account of active imagination, as transmitted by Chodorow, establishes the arising of the fantasy image as the essential first movement from which all subsequent analytical and ethical work proceeds.

Chodorow, Joan, Jung on Active Imagination, 1997supporting

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we have no alternative but to hand over the leadership to the unconscious and give it the opportunity of becoming a conscious content in the form of fantasies.

Jung’s clinical instruction, mediated by Chodorow, frames the fantasy image as the form through which the unconscious assumes conscious leadership when the ego’s habitual orientation proves inadequate.

Chodorow, Joan, Jung on Active Imagination, 1997supporting

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Rather than interrogating images and trying to decipher ‘what they mean,’ I suggest welcoming them and simply reflecting on their expressive qualities.

McNiff applies the depth-psychological primacy of the image to art therapy practice, arguing that fantasy images demand hospitality rather than interpretive reduction.

McNiff, Shaun, Art Heals: How Creativity Cures the Soul, 2004aside

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it would be quite appropriate to translate ‘ratio’ in this context as ‘fantasy.’ ‘Seminal rationes’ then become the seed fantasies that germinate in imagination and fertilize life.

Moore proposes an audacious translation of Ficino’s seminal rationes as seed fantasies, extending the fantasy image concept into cosmological and astrological psychology.

Moore, Thomas, The Planets Within: The Astrological Psychology of Marsilio Ficino, 1990aside

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an archetypal image is psychologically ‘universal,’ because its effect amplifies and depersonalizes… it resonates with collective, trans-empirical importance.

Hillman’s account of the archetypal image’s universality provides the ontological framework within which individual fantasy images participate in collective, transpersonal significance.

Hillman, James, Archetypal Psychology, 1983aside

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