Active Imagination in Theory, Practice and Training

Name: Active Imagination in Theory, Practice and Training
Author: Chiara Tozzi

Active Imagination in Theory, Practice and Training is a work by Chiara Tozzi (2022).

Core claims

Tozzi’s IAAP-supported research reveals that active imagination is not merely underutilized but structurally scotomized within Jungian training worldwide — a finding that indicts the institutional transmission of Jung’s most distinctive clinical contribution.
The book reframes the core debate about active imagination not as technique versus spontaneity but as “mentalized repetition” versus “a different way of being in the world,” positioning Gerhard Adler’s concept of “active passivity” as the decisive criterion for authentic practice.
By assembling contributions that span sandplay, handwriting, authentic movement, and Imaginative Movement Therapy, Tozzi demonstrates that active imagination is not a single method but a meta-capacity — an orientation of the ego toward the unconscious that can manifest through any expressive modality.

How does Tozzi’s distinction between “mentalized repetition of a technique” and “a different way of being in the world” map onto Hillman’s critique in Re-Visioning Psychology that ego psychology instrumentalizes the imaginal?
In what ways does Tozzi’s “Active Deep Writing” method — with its differentiation of ego-complex material from Self-originating content — operationalize Edinger’s inflation-alienation cycle as described in Ego and Archetype?
How does Marta Tibaldi’s account of East Asian trainees excelling at phases one and two but struggling with phase three of active imagination illuminate the cultural tensions Jung explored in his commentary on The Secret of the Golden Flower?