An alert, wakeful confrontation with the contents of the unconscious is, however, the very essence of active imagination. This calls for an ethical commitment in relation to the manifestations from within,48 otherwise one falls prey to the power principle and the exercise in imagination is destructive both to others and to the subject.49 It becomes a kind of black magic. Fantasies can be objectified by writing them, by drawing, painting or (rarely) by dancing them. A written dialogue is the most differentiated form and usually leads to the best results.50 Too one-sided an emphasis on the aesthetic quality of the images obstructs the realization of their meaning and should therefore be avoided, according to Jung. Impatience to get to the meaning as quickly as possible must be checked by patient attention to the formal aspect.51 But when the two concerns operate together rhythmically, then the transcendent function, which strives to unite conscious and unconscious, operates with greatest effect.52 Active imagination is the most effective means through which the patient can become independent of the therapist and learn to stand on his own feet. However, he must then undertake the inner work on his own, for no one else can do it for him.53 Whoever 48 Cf. Memories, pp. 19293/18485. 49 On the primitive level this happens to the so-called black shamans or black magicians. 50 Cf. Marie-Louise von Franz, "Die aktive Imagination in der Psychologie C. G. Jungs," Meditation in Religion und Psychotherapie, pp. 136ff; and Barbara Hannah, "The Healing Influence of Active Imagination in a Specific Case of Neurosis." Cf. also Nise da Silveira, "Expérience d'art spontané chez des Schizophrènes dans un Service thérapeutique occupationnel." 51 Cf. "The Transcendent Function," CW 8, pars. 173ff. One tries to snatch the meaning out of a few hints too quickly and misses those contents that might have come to light in a genuine confrontation. The danger of the aesthetic tendency is an overvaluation of the formal aspect, and the danger of the eagerness to understand is an overvaluation of the content. 52Ibid., par. 177. 53 Cf. Jung, Mysterium Coniunctionis, CW 14, par. 754. page_112 Page 113 does this will begin to understand that every fantasy is a genuine psychic process or experience which happens to him, and he thus becomes the active and suffering protagonist in an inner drama. But if he merely looks at the inner images, then nothing happens. One has to enter into the process with one's own personal reactions. There are those who do this in fact but with a fictitious personality, that is, the reactions are not genuine reactions but are "acted," while somewhere in the background there is the thought that this is all "just fantasy"; then, too, nothing happens and inner development comes to a standstill. If one "understands" the images and thinks that this is done with cognition, then one succumbs to a dangerous error. For whoever fails to take his own experience as an ethical commitment falls victim to the power principle.
— Marie-Louise von Franz
Active imagination fails, von Franz is saying, precisely at the moment you think you are doing it correctly. You have written the dialogue, drawn the image, given the fantasy a form — and yet something in the background stays clean, stays uninvested, watches from a slight remove and consoles itself with the thought that this is only imagination, only practice, only a kind of elaborate exercise. That shelter is where the inner work dies. The image requires your actual reactions, not a performance of having them.
The ethical commitment she names is not a moral overlay on a psychological technique. It is the condition of any encounter at all. Without it, the fantasy material does not meet a person; it meets a reader. And readers remain where they started. The power principle moves in as soon as genuine confrontation stops — not because evil enters, but because the soul's contents, left without a counterpart who will actually suffer them, turn and become governing. What was interior drama becomes interior tyranny.
There is something worth sitting with in the phrase "active and suffering protagonist." The activity and the suffering are not separate phases. You do not act first and then endure the consequences. They coincide — the entry into the image is already the exposure to it. This is what distinguishes active imagination from aesthetic appreciation, and from cognition: both of those allow distance. They are, finally, forms of watching. Von Franz, following Jung, insists that watching is exactly what cannot suffice.
Marie-Louise von Franz·C.G. Jung: His Myth in Our Time·1975