Description
Contemporary psychoanalysis needs less reality and more fantasy; what Michael Vannoy Adams calls the ‘fantasy principle’.
Freud insists that we conform to the reality principle. He assumes that there is only one reality and that we all define it in exactly the same way. Reality, however, is not given. There are many “realities” and they are constructed from fantasies that occur in us continuously. Fantasy, Adams declares, is what transforms consciousness.
This book is distinctive: it radically affirms the centrality of imagination. Adams challenges us to exercise and explore the imagination. He shows us how to value vitally important images that emerge from the unconscious, how to evoke such images, and how to engage them decisively. The Fantasy Principle explains how to apply special Jungian techniques to interpret images immediately and intimately through what Jung calls “active imagination.”
The Fantasy Principle argues for the recognition of a new school of psychoanalysis–the school of “imaginal psychology.” As Jung says, “Image is psyche.” The school of imaginal psychology emphasizes the transformative impact of images.
