Imitation occupies a peculiarly charged position in the depth-psychological corpus, oscillating between creative necessity and spiritual danger. McGilchrist advances the most sustained evolutionary-neurological argument: imitation is the ‘meta-skill that enables all other skills,’ the mechanism by which early hominids escaped genetic determinism through empathy and co-operation — faculties he assigns to the right hemisphere. His etymology linking imago to imitari grounds imagination itself in mimetic process, suggesting that what we imitate we become. Jung approaches the term from an opposing angle: in the Red Book he announces that ‘from that time henceforth all imitation is cursed,’ positioning it as the ego’s flight from authentic selfhood into the heroic prototype — a regression appropriate to collective, pre-individuated stages of development. Kurtz and Ketcham, drawing on monastic tradition, nuance this polarity by distinguishing imitatio effectus (external behavioral copying) from imitatio affectus (internalized transformation), insisting that the two are mutually reinforcing rather than categorically opposed. Gallagher’s phenomenological and developmental account locates imitation at the neurophysiological threshold of intersubjectivity: neonate facial imitation, enabled by mirror neurons and intermodal body-schema mechanisms, is the primordial form of knowing the other. Lorenz’s Platonic reading adds an aesthetics-and-ethics dimension: Socrates worries that imitation of the ‘excitable’ character-type feeds the irrational soul, while Rank argues that primitive art was never imitation of nature but expression of idea. The term thus traverses evolutionary biology, developmental phenomenology, individuation theory, religious practice, and literary aesthetics.
Imitation is how we acquire skills – any skill at all; and the gene for skill acquisition (imitation) would trump the genes for any individual skills.
McGilchrist argues that imitation functions as an evolutionary ‘meta-skill,’ overriding individually selected traits by enabling rapid, co-operative cultural adaptation through empathy rather than competition.
, The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World, 2009thesis
Imitation was a way of life when men still needed the heroic prototype… from that time henceforth all imitation is cursed. The new God laughs at imitation and discipleship.
Jung condemns imitation as a pre-individuated, ape-like mode of being that must be transcended once the psyche matures beyond collective heroic archetypes toward authentic selfhood.
, The Red Book: Liber Novus, 2009thesis
There is ample evidence… that imitation is extremely infectious: thinking about something, or even just hearing words connected with it, alters the way we behave and how we perform on tasks.
McGilchrist demonstrates that imitation is not merely behavioral copying but a neurologically pervasive process tied to imagination, virtue formation, and the social transmission of skills including music and language.
, The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World, 2009thesis
The medieval monks termed this identification imitatio, presenting it as a two-part process… External actions both signal and shape internal attitudes.
Kurtz distinguishes true identification — which transforms inner attitudes through external practice — from mere surface imitation, drawing on the monastic imitatio Christi tradition to articulate this dialectic.
, The Spirituality of Imperfection Storytelling and the, 1994thesis
Imitation can certainly be reduced to a matter of copying by rote… But it can also be driven by a feeling of attraction which results… in our apprehending the whole and trying to feel what that must be like from the inside.
McGilchrist distinguishes mechanical copying from genuine imitation as holistic, empathic ‘inhabiting’ of the other — a right-hemisphere mode that underlies language acquisition and identity formation.
, The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World, 2009thesis
There is significantly increased right-sided activity in the limbic system specifically during imitation, compared with mere observation, of emotional facial expressions.
Neuroimaging evidence localizes the emotional dimension of imitation to the right hemisphere’s limbic system, distinguishing it from passive observation and linking it to empathic resonance.
, The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World, 2009supporting
When the neonate sees another person perform a specific motor act… the visual stimulus initiates the firing of the same mirror neurons that are involved in the infant’s own performance of that motor act.
Gallagher proposes a mirror-neuron mechanism to explain neonate imitation, situating intersubjective mimicry at the neurophysiological foundation of the body schema and social cognition.
, How the Body Shapes the Mind, 2005supporting
Studies on imitation in infants conducted by Meltzoff and Moore (1977, 1983) show that invisible imitation does occur in newborns… newborn infants less than an hour old can indeed imitate facial gestures.
Gallagher reviews Meltzoff and Moore’s landmark findings that challenge traditional developmental models by demonstrating intermodal imitative capacity present from the first hours of life.
, How the Body Shapes the Mind, 2005supporting
The findings of imitation under these experimental conditions rule out ‘reflexes’ or release mechanisms as potential mediators of this activity… imitative behavior involves memory and representation.
Gallagher argues that neonate imitation requires representational and memorial capacities, ruling out purely reflexive explanations and implying an innate intersubjective cognitive architecture.
, How the Body Shapes the Mind, 2005supporting
To become infused with alien intelligence the habitual self has to apprentice itself to the alien presence through mimicry.
Bosnak draws on Benjamin’s mimetic faculty to argue that therapeutic embodied imagination requires a form of self-dissolving mimicry that enables identification with non-human or imaginal presences.
, Embodiment: Creative Imagination in Medicine, Art and Travel, 2007supporting
Anyone who wishes to understand and to savor the words of Christ to the full must try to make his whole life conform to the pattern of Christ’s life.
The Red Book’s footnote on the Imitatio Christi contextualizes Jung’s critique of imitation by tracing the historical tradition he is simultaneously drawing upon and overturning in his individuation theology.
, The Red Book: Liber Novus, 2009supporting
Imitative poetry focuses heavily on imitation of the excitable character-type, both because it is easier to imitate and because ‘the many’ greatly prefer what strikes them as familiar.
Lorenz’s reading of Plato’s Republic shows that dramatic imitation selectively amplifies the irrational part of the soul by appealing to what is most recognizable in the excitable character, feeding appetite at reason’s expense.
, The Brute Within: Appetitive Desire in Plato and Aristotle, 2006supporting
Besides the character’s apparent desire to come into being, there is a corresponding compulsion to become like others, a compelling force already observed in monkeys, hence the verb ‘aping.’
Bosnak invokes Taussig’s mimesis-and-alterity framework to ground therapeutic imagination in a pre-mammalian mimetic compulsion that underlies the embodied encounter with autonomous imaginal figures.
, Embodiment: Creative Imagination in Medicine, Art and Travel, 2007supporting
The intention of primitive art was far less towards the imitation of nature than towards the representation of particular ideas.
Rank, citing Kugler and Frobenius, argues that art at its origins was not mimetic in the naturalistic sense but expressive of inner ideas, challenging the Aristotelian mimesis-as-nature-copying tradition.
, Art and Artist: Creative Urge and Personality Development, 1932supporting
He definitely belongs to the tradition of the antique historians in the elevated style… who never make conscious and intentional use of the technique of realistic imitation because they scorn it as fit only for the low comic style.
Auerbach identifies the stylistic hierarchy in late antique historiography that excludes realistic imitation from elevated discourse, mapping a social-aesthetic politics of mimesis in Western literary tradition.
, Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature, 1953supporting
It is called The Imitation of Christ. It’s a very beautiful book. I often pray with it in the evenings.
A narrative cameo in the Red Book that introduces the Imitatio Christi as a living devotional practice, quietly staging the tension between collective religious imitation and Jung’s individuating project.
, The Red Book: Liber Novus, 2009aside
Suppose the glottis and the mouth pressed themselves together to articulate an ‘i’ in imitation of a small space, or opened wide into an ‘o’ to imitate a big one.
Rank sketches a speculative gestural-phonetic origin of language in which vocal organs imitate spatial magnitudes, locating mimicry at the evolutionary root of metaphor and linguistic meaning.
, Art and Artist: Creative Urge and Personality Development, 1932aside
Par une parfaite, quoique fausse imitation de la piété, ménager sourdement ses intérêts.
La Bruyère’s Onuphre, cited by Auerbach, exemplifies the morally inverted use of imitation — a perfect but false mimicry of piety deployed as social camouflage and self-interest.
, Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature, 1953aside