---
slug: von-franz-active-imagination-eb5498b3
title: "von Franz on Active Imagination"
author: "Marie-Louise von Franz"
work: "Psychotherapy"
section: ""
year: "1993"
tradition: jungian-core
themes:
  - active-imagination
fragment: |
  An analysand recounted to Jung an imagination she had begun in the following terms: "I was on a beach by the sea, and a lion was coming toward me. He turned into a ship and was out on the sea-" Jung interrupted her: "Nonsense. When a lion comes toward you, you have a reaction. You don't just wait around and watch until the lion turns into a ship!" We might say that the fact that the analysand had no reaction-for example, fear, self-defense, amazement-shows that she did not take the image of the lion entirely seriously, but rather in some corner of her mind was thinking, "After all, it's only a fantasy lion."
lead_in: ""
reflection: |
  Jung's interruption is the whole lesson. The woman on the beach has done something that looks like imagination but is actually its opposite: she has kept one foot outside the image, in the part of the mind that knows it is only a fantasy. That knowing is precisely what kills the encounter. A real lion produces fear, or the sudden calculation of escape, or the strange freezing that precedes both — some response that confirms the body has registered something as actual. None of that happened. The lion was allowed to dissolve into a ship because it was never fully met.
  
  This is where active imagination becomes demanding rather than pleasant. The soul does not disclose itself to a spectator. What the image requires is the same stake you would bring to the waking event — and that stake is what most people quietly withhold, because full entry means the lion might not turn into a ship, might not transform into anything consoling at all. It might simply remain a lion. Von Franz is pointing at the half-presence most people call "doing the work" — the careful, supervised distance from which the image is observed, interpreted, appreciated, and ultimately left unchanged. The lion that is never truly met cannot give what it came to give.
reflection_v0_3: |
  What resists here is the implied demand: that an inner image require the same embodied response as an outer event. Most people would consider the absence of reaction a sign of composure, even of meditative skill. Jung sees it as evasion. The lion is not scenery; it is a claim on the person. The shift to ship — fluid, distancing, symbolic — happens precisely because no one stood their ground. Hillman would extend this: images ask to be met on their own terms, not transcended or waited out. The practical upshot is uncomfortable — it means genuine imaginative work is not relaxed observation but something closer to encounter, with all the uncertainty that entails. What would it mean today to meet your images as if they could actually reach you?
parent_id: vonFranz_Psychotherapy__par0055
source: oracle-v3-retrieve
generated: 2026-04-16
regenerated: 2026-04-18
prompt_version: v2.7
status: draft
---

Franz writes:

> An analysand recounted to Jung an imagination she had begun in the following terms: "I was on a beach by the sea, and a lion was coming toward me. He turned into a ship and was out on the sea-" Jung interrupted her: "Nonsense. When a lion comes toward you, you have a reaction. You don't just wait around and watch until the lion turns into a ship!" We might say that the fact that the analysand had no reaction-for example, fear, self-defense, amazement-shows that she did not take the image of the lion entirely seriously, but rather in some corner of her mind was thinking, "After all, it's only a fantasy lion."

— Marie-Louise von Franz

Jung's interruption is the whole lesson. The woman on the beach has done something that looks like imagination but is actually its opposite: she has kept one foot outside the image, in the part of the mind that knows it is only a fantasy. That knowing is precisely what kills the encounter. A real lion produces fear, or the sudden calculation of escape, or the strange freezing that precedes both — some response that confirms the body has registered something as actual. None of that happened. The lion was allowed to dissolve into a ship because it was never fully met.

This is where active imagination becomes demanding rather than pleasant. The soul does not disclose itself to a spectator. What the image requires is the same stake you would bring to the waking event — and that stake is what most people quietly withhold, because full entry means the lion might not turn into a ship, might not transform into anything consoling at all. It might simply remain a lion. Von Franz is pointing at the half-presence most people call "doing the work" — the careful, supervised distance from which the image is observed, interpreted, appreciated, and ultimately left unchanged. The lion that is never truly met cannot give what it came to give.

---

Marie-Louise von Franz · *Psychotherapy* · 1993