---
slug: tozzi-active-imagination-c836ed70
title: "Tozzi on Active Imagination"
author: "Chiara Tozzi"
work: "Active Imagination in Theory, Practice and Training"
section: ""
year: "2017"
tradition: jungian-core
themes:
  - active-imagination
fragment: |
  Active imagination is the practice indicated by Jung for those who want to follow the path of individuation as outlined above. The cornerstone of our encounters with the figures that people the unconscious is naturally the work we do on and with dreams; active imagination represents the development of this. Jung speaks about "dreaming the dream on" and makes references to a sort of dreaming with our eyes wide open. The interpretation of dream images is a kind of long-distance relationship between consciousness and the unconscious: during the dream state, the ego is absent and when the awake and attentive ego reflects on the dream, the dream itself is a mere memory. Active imagination allows space for a dialogue up close
lead_in: ""
reflection: |
  Dreams are received at a distance — the ego absent during the event, present only to its aftermath, reading tracks in snow that has already shifted. What Tozzi is pointing at is the gap that interpretation cannot close: between the dreaming that happened without you and the waking mind that arrives too late to meet it. Active imagination is the attempt to close that gap not by better analysis but by staying in the room while the figures are still present.
  
  Jung's phrase "dreaming the dream on" is deceptively modest. It suggests continuity, an extension of something already under way. What it actually requires is that consciousness hold itself open without seizing control — present enough to respond, permeable enough not to dictate. This is harder than interpretation, because interpretation has the comfort of distance. You can stand back, apply concepts, reach conclusions. The dialogue up close that Tozzi names demands something different: that the ego remain in the encounter without domesticating what it meets. The unconscious figures are not waiting to be understood. They are waiting to be heard, which is not the same thing, and which costs considerably more.
reflection_v0_3: |
  The phrase "dialogue up close" earns its place at the end of this passage, and Tozzi is precise to leave it there, unfinished. Dream interpretation, she suggests, is always a retrospective act — the ego arrives after the fact, handles a memory, keeps its distance. What active imagination changes is the temporal structure of the encounter: consciousness does not wait for the unconscious to finish speaking. The ego is present, attending, responding. Hillman would press on exactly this point — he was suspicious of any practice that strengthened the ego's hand in dealings with the imaginal — but Tozzi's framing is careful enough to sidestep that charge; the ego here is invited into dialogue, not handed a transcript to interpret. What changes when you are no longer translating from another room, but sitting across the table?
parent_id: Tozzi_Active_Imagination_in_Theory,_Practice__par0034
source: oracle-v3-retrieve
generated: 2026-04-17
regenerated: 2026-04-18
prompt_version: v2.7
status: draft
---

Tozzi writes:

> Active imagination is the practice indicated by Jung for those who want to follow the path of individuation as outlined above. The cornerstone of our encounters with the figures that people the unconscious is naturally the work we do on and with dreams; active imagination represents the development of this. Jung speaks about "dreaming the dream on" and makes references to a sort of dreaming with our eyes wide open. The interpretation of dream images is a kind of long-distance relationship between consciousness and the unconscious: during the dream state, the ego is absent and when the awake and attentive ego reflects on the dream, the dream itself is a mere memory. Active imagination allows space for a dialogue up close

— Chiara Tozzi

Dreams are received at a distance — the ego absent during the event, present only to its aftermath, reading tracks in snow that has already shifted. What Tozzi is pointing at is the gap that interpretation cannot close: between the dreaming that happened without you and the waking mind that arrives too late to meet it. Active imagination is the attempt to close that gap not by better analysis but by staying in the room while the figures are still present.

Jung's phrase "dreaming the dream on" is deceptively modest. It suggests continuity, an extension of something already under way. What it actually requires is that consciousness hold itself open without seizing control — present enough to respond, permeable enough not to dictate. This is harder than interpretation, because interpretation has the comfort of distance. You can stand back, apply concepts, reach conclusions. The dialogue up close that Tozzi names demands something different: that the ego remain in the encounter without domesticating what it meets. The unconscious figures are not waiting to be understood. They are waiting to be heard, which is not the same thing, and which costs considerably more.

---

Chiara Tozzi · *Active Imagination in Theory, Practice and Training* · 2017