fantasies
Fantasy occupies a pivotal, contested position across the depth-psychological corpus, functioning simultaneously as epistemological category, psychic product, therapeutic method, and ontological mode of being. Jung’s foundational definition in Psychological Types distinguishes two meanings — fantasm (a complex of ideas without objective referent) and imaginative activity — while insisting that fantasy is the very medium through which opposites are bridged and psychic life renews itself. Far from a mere wish-fulfillment or escape, Jung treats fantasy as the generative matrix from which all great human achievements emerge. Hillman radicalizes this position: in the archetypal school, fantasy is not an occasional psychic event but the continuous, constitutive activity of soul itself — the way the world is animated and soul is given back to phenomena. Moore, drawing on Hillman and Ficino, grounds this further, arguing that fantasy comprises the images and stories underlying every human action, whether conscious or unconscious. Johnson and Chodorow distinguish passive fantasy from the disciplined engagement of active imagination, treating the former as raw material to be rendered productive through deliberate participation. Kalsched reveals fantasy’s survival function under trauma, where archetypal fantasy sustains a fragile ego in dissociated states. Samuels maps the concept’s proximity to Kleinian unconscious phantasy, noting critical differences from the archetype. The corpus thus charts a field in which fantasy ranges from pathology’s raw symptom to soul’s primary language.
By fantasy I understand two different things: 1. a fantasm, and 2. imaginative activity… it has no objective referent… it is merely the output of creative psychic activity, a manifestation or product of a combination of energized psychic elements.
Jung’s canonical technical definition bifurcates fantasy into passive product (fantasm) and active imaginative process, grounding both in the energic dynamics of the psyche rather than in external reference.
, Psychological Types, 1921thesis
This bridge is already given us in creative fantasy. It is not born of either, for it is the mother of both… what great thing ever came into existence that was not first fantasy?
Jung elevates creative fantasy to the transcendent function between opposed psychic positions, arguing it is the generative origin of all significant human achievement.
, Psychological Types, 1921thesis
Fantasy consists of the images and stories we have within us as we go about our daily affairs… it is the fantasy that truly tells the expectations one has or explains the satisfactions or frustrations one feels.
Moore, citing Hillman, defines fantasy as the constitutive imaginal substrate beneath every action, conscious or unconscious, that reveals the soul’s actual orientation toward the world.
, The Planets Within: The Astrological Psychology of Marsilio Ficino, 1990thesis
When we have no fantasy about the world, then it is objective, dead…. [Fantasy] is a way of being in the world and giving back soul to the world.
Drawing on Hillman, Moore establishes that fantasy is not ornamental but ontologically necessary — the mode through which soul inhabits and enlivens phenomena.
, The Planets Within: The Astrological Psychology of Marsilio Ficino, 1982thesis
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 renders fantasy images the primary datum of psychological inquiry, arguing they constitute the irreducible medium through which all psychic reality, including consciousness itself, is conveyed.
, Senex & Puer, 2015thesis
Participate in the fantasy, enter into dialogue with the characters, record what is done and said, and thereby convert this passive fantasy into genuine Active Imagination.
Johnson distinguishes passive fantasy from active imagination by the criterion of conscious participation, treating the former as raw unconscious pressure that must be transformed through deliberate engagement.
, Inner Work: Using Dreams and Active Imagination for Personal Growth, 1986supporting
The true origin is the archetypal fantasy itself, not the objective scene where the fantasy is ‘observed’ as ‘fact.’
Hillman argues that ostensibly empirical psychological observations — including Freud’s theories of femininity — are themselves projections of archetypal fantasy, not objective findings.
, The Myth of Analysis: Three Essays in Archetypal Psychology, 1972supporting
By taking the soul’s sickness fantasy at face value as clinical pathology, the clinical approach creates what it then must treat… ‘Psychological’ and ‘treatment’ cannot be conjoined—unless we revise what we mean by treatment and see it as a fantasy.
Hillman reframes clinical therapeutic categories themselves as fantasies, arguing that treating pathology as literal fact rather than imaginal event already distorts the soul’s meaning.
, Re-Visioning Psychology, 1975supporting
Inside this world of illusion, the mortified Psyche’s fragile ego is kept alive like a hydroponic plant, feeding nightly on the nectar of Eros’ love, i.e., on archetypal fantasy.
Kalsched identifies archetypal fantasy as the life-sustaining medium within the schizoid encapsulation following severe trauma, preserving ego integrity at the cost of dissociation from outer reality.
, The Inner World of Trauma: Archetypal Defences of the Personal Spirit, 1996supporting
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 restoration of fantasy within a theological argument, linking the soul’s imaginal life to polytheistic pluralism against iconoclastic abstraction.
, Peaks and Vales: The Soul/Spirit Distinction as Basis for the Differences between Psychotherapy and Spiritual Discipline, 1975supporting
It is Klein’s notion of unconscious fantasy, however, that is the psychoanalytic idea most closely aligned with archetypal theory.
Samuels maps the convergence and divergence between Kleinian unconscious phantasy and Jungian archetypal theory, noting the structural alignment while preserving the ontological distinction.
, Jung and the Post-Jungians, 1985supporting
We have no alternative but to hand over the leadership to the unconscious and give it the opportunity of achieving conscious content in the form of fantasies.
Jung prescribes a therapeutic surrender to unconscious fantasy production as the necessary counterweight to the ego’s one-sided rationalism, framing this as disciplined rather than passive.
, Two Essays on Analytical Psychology, 1953supporting
Giving up the fantasy of revenge does not mean giving up the quest for justice; on the contrary, it begins the process of joining with others to hold the perpetrator accountable.
Herman distinguishes empowering fantasy from pathological fantasy in trauma recovery, arguing that the revenge fantasy and the forgiveness fantasy both imprison the survivor in private psychic space rather than enabling social justice.
, Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence—From Domestic Abuse to Political Terror, 1992supporting
The ability to go into the realms of fantasy is essential to the finding of the anima; one must be freed from profane reality, at least to the extent of trying to fantasize.
Von Franz presents the capacity for fantasy as a prerequisite for anima encounter, linking imaginative freedom to the symbolic journey into the unconscious feminine.
, The Interpretation of Fairy Tales, 1970supporting
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 full ontological reality of imaginal figures — external or internal — asserting that numinosity derives from their animation rather than from abstract transcendence.
, Healing Fiction, 1983supporting
He could go into his fantasy or vision, participate consciously in it, and make it into an active exchange between the conscious and unconscious energy systems.
Johnson traces the discovery of active imagination to Jung’s experiential demonstration that conscious participation in fantasy can transform it from passive reception into genuine psychic dialogue.
, Inner Work: Using Dreams and Active Imagination for Personal Growth, 1986supporting
The fantasy itself is continuous. The contents by which it is defined and recognized change, but they should not be confused with the category itself.
Hillman argues that the archetypal category of psychic pathologizing persists as a structural fantasy independent of the culturally variable contents through which it is expressed.
, Re-Visioning Psychology, 1975aside
Visualize the most exciting, fascinating, and ideal future you can imagine for yourself five years from now… Anything is possible in your fantasy, and the wilder and least likely the better.
Greer employs fantasy in a prospective, goal-directing sense within a Tarot workbook context, using imaginative projection as a tool for self-determination rather than depth-psychological analysis.
, Tarot for Your Self: A Workbook for the Inward Journey, 1984aside