MARY WATKINS

INVISIBLE GUESTSThe Development of Imaginal Dialogues

SPRING PUBLICATIONS

WOODSTOCK, CONNECTICUT

2000

(COPYRIGHT 2016 MARY WATKINS. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED)

Imagination as Reality

Chapter 5 from:

CHAPTER FIVE

Imagination as RealityWhat is meant by “reality?” It would seem to be something very erratic, very undependable— now to be found in a dusty road, now in a scrap of newspaper in the street, now in a daffodil in the sun.It lights up a group in a room and stamps some casual saying. It overwhelms one walking home beneath the stars and makes the silent world more real than the world of speech— and then there it is again in an omnibus in the uproar of Piccadilly. Sometimes, too, it seems to swell in shapes too far away for us to discern what their nature is.

—Virginia Woolf, 1929, 113-114

H ow differen t W oolf’s vision o f reality is from th a t o f m echa­nistic ph ilosophy’s. W hitehead characterizes the latter as “a dull affair, soundless, scentless, colourless; merely the hu r­rying o f m aterial endlessly, m eaninglessly” (1925, 56). In W o o lf’s vi­sion, the real darts betw een the social w orld, the w orld o f nature, and

the w orld o f things; it darts no t alone b u t hand-in-hand w ith the im aginai.9 H ow differen t from conceptions o f the real as only the external and the material, o f the imaginai as a confusion o f wish-laden

'' Hillman (1982) reminds us that in ancient Greek physiology, as in Biblical psychology, the heart was the organ for both sensation and imagination. Thus, sensing/perceiving the world and imagining the world were not conceived o f sepa­rately, as they were later by the Scholastics, Cartesians, and British Empiricists. In these later psychologies sensing facts (inevitably about the external, material world) and in tu iting fantasies are radically distinguished, sundering the connec tions between reality and imagination.

60 CRITIQUE OF CONTEMPORARY APPROACHESdistortions! Certainly these views illum ine som e o f ou r experience o f the im aginai as a needed preserve against the harshness o f reality. T he w ord “real” functions n o t to tell w hat som eth ing is, bu t rather to delineate w hat it is not. I t excludes possible ways o f being “n o t real.” T he prob lem is th a t w hat “real” is canno t be p inned dow n in general, as it differs in various contexts. In dealings w ith im agining, the words “real” and “reality” are abused. Sarbin states:

T he traditional diagnostician uses these words in two ways: he says, for example, “ the patient claims the hallucinated object has reality or is real;” that “ the patient is ou t o f con tact with reality or the real world.” The non-identity o f the m eaning o f “real” for the diagnoser and the pa­tient reflects som e o f the problem s in the em ploym ent o f the words real and reality. (1967, 376)

D iffe re n t n o tio n s o f th e real yield vastly d iffe re n t valua tion s o f im agining.

Let us therefo re tu rn a corner and search ou t o ther perspectives on the real and see w here they w ould lead im aginai dialogues and how they w ould understand the functions o f these im aginai conver­sations. In do ing so we shall tu rn to religion, aesthetics, and ph iloso­phy to p u t in to question the presuppositions o f those contem porary developm ental theories which regard the im aginai as a d isto rtion o f reality, o r as derivative from and subserv ient to external, material, and social reality.

We follow this course n o t because we tacitly subscribe to a reli­gious ontology. Rather, we seek po in ts o f view which are differen t enough from developm ental psychology’s that the very con trast shall enab le us to re fle c t m ore precise ly on the n a tu re o f o u r usual th eore tica l com m itm ents.

Imaginai Dialogues as M irrors o f Reality or Its Creator?he con tem porary W estern psychological world view claims thatim ages are in ternalizations o f m aterial and social reality which

serve the function o f represen ting this reality. In aesthetics this cor­responds to the view th a t the m ind and the im agination are reflectors o f external ob jects— their m irrors— and th a t the function o f a rt and o f im agination is to reproduce external reality. F rom this perspective,

IMAGINATION A S REALITY 61the process o f invention consists in “a reassem bly o f ‘ideas’ which are literally images, o r replicas o f sensations; and the resulting art w ork [is] itse lf com parable to a m irro r presenting a selected and o r­dered im age o f life” (Abrams, 1953, 69). D ivergences betw een the image and w hat it was m odeled after— always a prob lem in such th eo ­ries— are dealt with by m irro r theorists in one o f two ways. First, “any aesthetic apprehension w hich culm inates in ano ther view o f objects and relations is viewed as a d isto rtion or as a m anifestation o f pathology: at w orst, a disease o f the mind; a disease o f the heart, at best” (Kaplan, 1981 d, 7). Alternatively, art is seen as im itating no t w hat we observe b u t w hat is “in” o r “beh ind” w hat we observe, such as the Ideas or Form s which gave rise to nature as well as art (Abrams, 1953).

M. H. A bram s’ book The Mirror and the Lamp (1953) contrasts this m im etic view w ith th e expressive th eo ry o f a rt p ro p o se d by the Rom antics. T hese theories are no t presented as incom patible view­po in ts to be chosen betw een, b u t as perspectives which allow us to see m ore o f the com plexity o f the ph enom enon o f art. This is our own aim with respect to imaginai dialogues— n o t to pit one theory against ano ther w ith the hope o f one taking a last fall, bu t to see if we can begin to m ove m ore freely am ong view points w hich have been banished from our developm ental theorizing, as well as those sustained by our p resen t conceptions.

In the Rom antic view the im agination is n o t m erely a replica o f preexisting external reality. I t has its own “internal source o f m otion ;” it does n o t m erely represen t scenes b u t creates them (Abrams, 1953, 22, 25 ). W hen images o f the natural o r social w orld are evoked they do n o t function as copies o f the “ real,” b u t rather serve to sym bolize som ething else, often em otion s10 and experiences.

T his is a radical shift. It dem ands a change in our developm ental n o tio n s . B ecause a copy th eo ry o f p e rc e p tio n view s im ages as rep lica tin g the external world, then divergences betw een im age and external referen t are taken as pathognom ic, as developm entally in fe­rior to those images w hich faithfully copy natural or social reality. T hus we have arrived at theories stressing that developm ent co in­cides w ith an increasing realism. But if the m ind and the im agination

“N ot these plants, not these mountains, do I wish to copy, but my spirit, my m ood, which governs me just at the m o m en t...” said Tieck, a G erm an Romantic (quoted in Abrams, 1953, 50).

62 CRITIQUE OF CONTEMPORARY APPROACHES'are seen as contribu ting creatively to perception, then divergence between image and some external reality need not be negative. As soon as we allow that the image represents something other than the external, realism is no longer the measure, but rather the fit between the symbol and the symbolized. To achieve this fit, all manner of “distortions” o f natural or social reality may be called for, and their achievement must be seen as a sign o f development.

Etienne Gilson, discussing the painter Eugene Delacroix, wrote:But a true painter does no t borrow his subject from real­ity; he does no t even content him self w ith arranging the material provided by reality so as to make it acceptable to the eye. His starting point is fantasy, im agination, fiction, and all the elem ents o f reality that do no t agree with the creature im agined by the pain ter have to be ruthlessly eliminated. (1957, 130)

Jam es Hillm an discusses this conflict o f possible in terpretations in Re-Visioning Psychology, in which he describes the “naturalistic fallacy”— the tendency to judge “images to be right or wrong (positive or negative) largely by standards o f naturalism . T he m ore like nature an image appears, the m ore positive; the m ore d isto rted the image, the m ore negative” (1975b, 84). Taking issue w ith this approach, Hillm an (1975b) argues:

A m ulticolored child, a woman w ith an erected penis, an oak tree bearing cherries, a snake becom ing a cat who talks, are neither w rong, false, no r abnorm al because they are unnatural. Figures o f the im agination are no t restricted to jungles and zoos; they can crouch upon my bookshelf or stalk the corridors o f last night’s motel. (85-86)

A. C. Bradley, in his Oxford Lectures on Poetry, argues that poetry’s nature is not to be

a part, n o r yet a copy, o f the real w o rld ...b u t to be a world by itself, independent, com plete, autonom ous; and to possess it fully you must enter that world, conform to its laws, and ignore for a time the beliefs, aims and par­ticular conditions which belong to you in the o ther world o f reality ...[Life and poetry] are parallel developm ents which nowhere m eet, or, i f I may use loosely a w ord w hich will be

IMAGINATION A S REALITY 63serviceable later, they are analogous... They have d iffer­ent kinds o f existence. (1920, 4, 6, 23-24)

Similarly, E lder O lson insists th a t poetic statem ents are n o t p ro p o si­tions, and “ since they are n o t statem ents about things w hich exist outside the poem , it would be m eaningless to evaluate them as true or false” (1942, 210-211).11

In the extrem e the naturalistic fallacy operates no t only to dictate the kinds o f characters, the images o f self and o thers w hich form imaginai dialogues, b u t to negate and discontinue the existence o f such d ialogues in th o u g h t and p rivate speech . F o r in s tan ce fo r Vygotsky, w hen there is no actual in terlocu to r for w hom our speech o r though t is in tended, our speech should n o t suggest that there is. I f it does so anyway it is no t yet efficient; it is insufficiently developed. T ho ug h t should reflect m aterial reality. D ialogue that occurs in soli­tu d e is su p e rflu o u s , at b est. B u t w h a t i f th o u g h t is in h e ren tly d ram atic and th us dialogical? T h en , as K ap lan has said , it is the existence o f m onologues that we m ust account for!

W erner (1948) em phasizes the m ultiplicity o f possible worlds and realities to a greater extent than the o ther developm ental psycholo­gists we have so far considered. He m aintains that d ifferen t kinds o f creatures experience different “psychological w orlds,” and th a t w ithin each o f th ese psycho log ical w orlds th e re are various “ sp h eres o f reality.” P retend play and its imaginai dialogues are seen in this fram e­w ork as sym bolizing activity. “This paradigm ,” says Franklin, “ takes as basic the idea that sym bolizing does n o t— in its basic form — merely reflect or com m unicate w hat is already know n b u t is form ulative, m eaning creating” (1981, 14).12 Play creates a reality. From this po in t o f view, developm ent is not seen “as a linear (or spiralling) progression d irec ted tow ards ad ap ta tio n to a p reex is tin g ‘ex te rn a l rea lity ’ or (alternatively) tow ards the co n stru c tio n o f a psychological reality dom inated by a given m ode o f th ough t (such as the ‘scientific’),” bu t is a “ d ifferen tia tio n , progressive co n s tru c tio n and in teg ra tion o f spheres within psychological reality” (Franklin, 1981, 2-3). O bservations

11 Maritain (1953) sees this liberation from “realism” as at the same time a process o f liberation from “conceptual, logical, discursive reason” (80). This is apparent in the work o f the surrealists, for example, which follows neither the rules o f realism nor o f reason, but through im probable juxtapositions creates a new reality with its own set o f meanings (Gilson, 1957).

12 See W erner and Kaplan, 1963/1984; Kaplan 1981 d.

64 CRITIQUE OF CONTEMPORARY APPROACHESo f young children— Piaget’s included— can be used to sup po rt the developm ental no tion th a t children are increasingly able to diverge in their im agery from a replication o f m aterial and social reality and no t just th a t their images becom e m ore realistic.

Lowe (1975), in her study o f the developm ent o f represen tational play in infants, maintains that at first the child applies his own activities (being fed, being com bed, and being p u t to bed) to him self, and that w ith increasing age these are applied to the doll. So at first the doll is know n th rough w hat the child does to it. T he child makes the doll the ob ject o f activities th a t the child has previously been the object of. In so doing, the fo rm er ob ject (the child) becom es the subject o r agent (the one w ho perfo rm s the activities on another). This kind o f play liberates children from the ob ject role w hich so often characterizes the early dependence o f the infant. I t allows children to reflect from a distance upon the roles w hich are necessarily theirs.

A t first the im aginai o ther is a passive recipient o f the child’s a ttention . Lowe suggests th a t it is n o t coincidental th a t the age at w hich the child begins to anim ate the doll is the same age a t which the child begins to p u t words together (approxim ately 21 m onths). In d eed , she claim s th a t som e d e -cen te rin g is necessary fo r b o th activities. She suggests th a t as a verbal com p onen t is added to these early action sequences, there is a “progressive anim ation o f the doll, culm inating at a po in t w here the doll becom es an agent in its own right ra ther than a recipient o f the child’s care” (1975, 45).

Lowe no tes th a t around 30 m onths o f age, the children in her study w ould som etim es bo th express an awareness o f their identifi­cation w ith the doll (“ like the girl w ho placed the doll prone on its bed w ith the com m ent ‘I sleep like th a t’”) and would attribu te their ow n dislikes to the doll (“She doesn’t w ant to go to bed ;” “ She says she doesn’t w ant d inner”). I t w ould seem that w ith the acquisition o f language the im aginai o ther can begin to be m ore than just a passive recipient o f the im aginer’s actions and it can begin to be articulated w ith respect to feelings and desires. However, this does no t m ean th a t the onse t o f language necessarily entails m ore anim ation and articulation o f the o ther with respect to psychological properties. O ne finds even in the im aginai dialogues o f adults that the o ther may be presen ted as a m ere shadow or stick figure.

IMAGINATION A S REALITY 65

As the imaginai other is granted its own animation and agency, it can surprise the imaginer with its words. The imaginai other can act upon the self as well as be acted upon. Thus the range o f situations which can be represented is enlarged, since one can now become the object o f the other’s actions just as the other was earlier the object of one’s own actions.

I f one analyzes the im aginai dialogues p resen ted by Piaget in Play, Dreams and Imitation (1962b), the identity o f the imaginai o ther appears to go from a vague younger child (i.e., the child’s own role with respect to actual others), to the child’s m other, to som eone o u t­side the child’s family b u t know n to the child, to som eone heard about bu t no t known, to a character which is entirely a creation o f the child’s mind. Both Piaget (1962b, 130) and Vygotsky (1978, 103) no te how in th e beg in n in g the im aginary situa tion s be tw een se lf and im aginai o th e r are rep e titio n s o r tran sm u ta tio n s o f th e ch ild ’s actual expe­riences. O n ly gradually does there ensue a sh ift from the sim ple “ transposition o f real life to the creation o f im aginary beings for which no m odel can be found” (Piaget, 1962b, 130). Piaget observed play in w hich imaginary lands were created. T he action in these worlds extended over time and involved increasingly com plex scenarios and relations betw een characters. For instance Sachs’ 10-year-old daugh­ter com plained to her m other that it was very “hard to use her m odel horses in play with new friends because they did n o t know the char­acteristics o f each horse and the history o f the herd” (Sachs, 1980).

T he liberation o f characters’ identities from a narrow repertoire o f know n others is no t only experienced in imaginai dialogues with respect to the role o f the other, bu t even w ith respect to the role the child herself takes in these dialogues. Turning again to the protocols in Play, Dreams and Imitation (Piaget, 1962b), “J.” is first herself, then either herself or a m othering-caretaking figure, and only five m onths later a person outside the m other-child dyad (i.e., the farm er’s wife, and then the postm an). Still later she plays the role o f a real person w hom she has never m et before, only heard of. A nd finally, she is an imaginary being altogether. Piaget points out that only when his subjects reached two years o f age was there a transition from attem pting to imitate actions o f the other while continuing to be oneself to actually becom ing the other. Research carried ou t by G arvey (1979) and Garvey and Berndt (1977) has identified three stages the child passes through in

66 CRITIQUE OF CONTEMPORARY APPROACHES'becom ing the other: 1) the child acts the role o f the self in relation to the imaginai other; 2) during a transitional phase, the child neither is herself nor has she assumed a role; 3) the child takes on imaginai identities.

In psychoanalytic theory as well as in Piagetian theory, the m ove­m ent from direct im itation to portrayal o f imaginai o thers for w hom no d irect m odel can be ascertained is neutralized by a theory o f dis­to rtio n concern ing im agery and the im agination. Ju s t as the child’s im ages beg in to flow er, the d is to r tio n th eo ry explains, they m ust disguise them selves in o rder to elude the censorship o f repression. So they are tidied up. C haracters change role and costum e. The char­acters o f social reality— m other, father, b ro ther— don the costum es o f fancy. T hrough in terpreta tion the make up is taken off, revealing once again the reals and knowns o f F reu d ’s reality. But a lion image w hich is in terp reted to be a little boy’s father may no t simply be an instance o f d isto rtion , attem pting to spare the boy the anxiety o f dealing directly w ith the father image. I f we tu rn to Jung, we find a d ifferen t theory o f sym bolism that helps us escape from such to tal reduction to external reality. H ere the character o f the lion serves quite a d ifferen t function , that o f sym bolizing an idea which is no t yet know n and w hose best expression at the m om ent is this lion. In o th e r w ords, the sym bol does n o t reiterate w hat is already know n bu t a ttem pts to give form to w hat is n o t yet realized in its particularity. K aplan calls this a “ radical aesthetic,” where “aesthetic creation is the im aginative realization o f som e lived-through, had experience, w hich w ould— save for the aesthetic activity— resist objectivity and realization” (1981 d, 7). I t is the “bringing o f experiences and enjoy­m ents o u t o f the darkness o f m ere existence in to the bright sunshine o f con tem plation and know ledge” ; it is the “giving o f significant form to what is otherwise ‘unbodied,’ form less” (Kaplan, 198Id, 7, 10).

To return to the image of the lion we need to study carefully the rest o f the image’s context. It is not evident simply from “lion” which attributes of lion are salient, which are hidden but meaningful, and which are inappropriate. A lion may scare its accompanying partner, but this frightening aspect may actually be less meaningful than the respect the lion commands in his terrain. Although these characteristics are indeed inextricable, they can be arranged in different hierarchies of meaning. The lion may very well have reference to the father. But as we pay closer attention to the image of the lion, its meaning goes

IMAGINATION A S REALITY 67beyond simple synonymy with the father. As we all know, the child encounters many lion-like aspects in the world.

Such sym bolization o f course pertains to the role o f the self as well. Role taking is o ften seen as the child’s a ttem p t to assim ilate societal roles o ther than his own, and their perspectives on himself. However, with sym bolization in m ind the child never just practices a role b u t uses the role as well to express h im self and to create an alternative world. T hus one is n o t a policem an for the m ere practice function o f exploring “policem an” as a role, bu t because issues o f power, p ro tection , and vulnerability are afoot. To look at it in this way is similar to dream in terp re ta tion w here one m ust ask, “Why out o f all the possible day residues, is it this particular detail around which a dream has grow n?” T he child does n o t ask h im self how to express a sense o f som e naughtiness. H e becom es and acts the part o f a dirty, slippery, hungry little pig. Instead o f saying one is needy, one acts the part o f a crying, hungry, w hining infant. T his enacting is n o t only relevant to understanding children and adults’ dream s and imaginai dialogues, bu t also to changes o f tone and voice in conversation.

T his line o f developm ent, away from im ages as im itations o f reality to images as creators o f new worlds has been overshadow ed by Piaget’s and Vygotsky’s assum ption that this form o f play gradually fades as gam es with rules replace it. R ather than join the debate over w hether play is exclusively replication, reconstruction , or transfo r­m atio n , F rank lin (1981) o ffe rs the a lte rn a tiv e o f de lin ea tin g two tendencies in p retend play (and, I w ould add, in imaginai dialogues): one tow ard realism , the o th e r tow ard the fantastical. W hile the fantastical by defin ition breaks the rules o f everyday reality, there is w ithin such play a developm ent tow ard greater inner coherence, just as in reality-oriented play. Such m ovem ent tow ard inner coherence, Franklin remarks, characterizes all form s o f world-making. In imaginai dialogues this m ight m ean that characterizations o f self and others becom e m ore stable, that dialogues follow the rules o f conversation, o r th a t individual situations begin to coalesce in to m ore structured and well-defined worlds o f particularized relations.

This differentiation between realistic and fantastical development o f images and imaginai dialogues is an old one. The notion that imagi­nai dialogues are copies or imitations o f actually occurring dialogues is o f course suggested in the very root o f the term imagination—

68 CRITIQUE OF CONTEMPORARY APPROACHESimago, an im itation or copy. I f we tu rn to Vico, we find him differen­tiating betw een imaginatio and phantasia. In the latter one does n o t simply represen t the given (as in the form er), bu t creates or brings som ething new in to being. Thus, the image is liberated from a posi­tion o f inferiority w ith respect to external reality, as “image does no t represen t a given. I t is a g iv en ... [it] is n o t an extension o f reality. I t is the novelty in the sense o f creating som ething new from a p resen t reality ... I t is the m aking o f reality itse lf” (Verene, 1979, 47-48).

Recent research has also helped to dispel the prejudiced concep­tion th a t involvem ent w ith imaginai com panions necessarily conflicts w ith involvem ent in reality and w ith in terpersonal relations— and is thus suggestive o f pathology. Singer in 1973 studied 141 three- and four-year olds, and found that 65 percent reported having im aginary playmates. T he children w ho repo rted having such com panions were less aggressive, m ore cooperative, smiled m ore, were be tte r able to concentrate , were less frequently bored, and were m ore linguistically advanced than their companionless cohorts. They were clearly cognizant o f the difference betw een external reality and the worlds o f their im agination. T here was no indication that these children as a group were supplanting ob ject relations w ith fantasy.13Similarly a study done in 1968 by Lew insohn o f patients w ith hallucinations found that o ther psychiatric patien ts judged the hallucinating ones to be m ore friendly and less defensive and to have m ore positive expectations regarding o thers than non-hallucinating patients.

PersonifyingThe intelligible forms of ancient poets the fair humanities of old religion......all these have vanished.They live no longer in the faith of reason!But still the heart doth need a language, still Doth the old instinct bring back old names...

— Coleridge’s expanded translation of part of Schiller’s “Die Piccolomini”

' ’Hillman (1977) and Watkins (1981a) also note that in psychotherapeutic work with adults, imaginai figures often desire not to separate their fleshly conversant from daily life, but to be taken by the imaginer into the world. See the case pre­sented in Chapter Twelve in this regard.

IMAGINATION A S REALITY 69

For the Rom antics the p o e t’s creation o f im aginary beings, the per­son ification o f virtues, vices, passions and nature, likened the p o e t to G o d , jo in ing H im in the p eo p lin g o f w orlds, in b rin g in g

“ possibility over in to the realm o f being” (Abram s, 1953, 288).* l4T he poet and the pain ter may use the natural world, bu t their in ten tion is to create w ith it a new w orld, ano ther w orld— which has been called a “heterocosm ” (Abrams, 1953, 27).15 A t the center o f this o ther world, this alternate w orld, are imaginai others. We hear this in the w ords o f Rom antics such as A ddison, Young, Aiken, W arton.

[Poetry] has no t only the whole circle o f nature for its province, bu t makes new worlds o f its own, [and] shews us persons who are no t to be found in being ... (Addison, quoted in Abrams, 1953, 275)

F or Y oung th e h u m an m ind “ in th e vast vo id bey on d real existence... can call fo rth shadowy beings, and unknow n worlds.” And in Joh n Aiken’s m ind, the im agination could n o t be con ten t w ith “the bounds o f natural vision,” and quickly “peoples the world with new beings...em bodies abstract ideas” (both quoted in Abram s, 1953, 382).

For Joseph W arton, writing in 1753, personification is the peculiar privilege o f poetry and ingredient to a lively im agination:

I t is the peculiar privilege o f p o e try ...to give Life and m otion to imm aterial beings; and form , and colour, and action, even to abstract ideas; to em body the Virtues, and Vices, and the Passions... Prosopopoeia, therefore, o r per­sonification, conducted w ith dignity and propriety, may be justly esteem ed one o f the greatest efforts o f the cre­ative power o f a warm and lively imagination (quoted in Abrams, 1953, 289)

W hereas developm ental and psychoanalytic psychologies focus on how the imaginai o ther is an internalization o f actual others, or o f aspects

14 W. B. Yeats, in speaking o f elves, spirits, fairies, and goblins said, “all nature is full o f invisible people...som e o f these are ugly or grotesque, some wicked or foolish, many beautiful beyond any one we have ever seen, an d ...the beautiful are not far away when we are walking in pleasant and quiet places” (Arrowsmith and M oorse, 1977).

14 In a discussion o f the painter Delacroix, Gilson (1957) said that “ the final casue o f all operations perform ed by a pianter is to casue the existence o f a self-subsisting and autonom ous being— namely the particular painting freely concieved by his imagination” (131).

70 CRITIQUE OF CONTEMPORARY APPROACHESo f them — albeit o ften disguised and disto rted represen ta tions— the R om antics and others see imaginai beings as donn ing the costum es o f figures in the upper world. Personifying is n o t an anachronistic relic o f social life w hich serves merely to com pensate for absen t or inadequate “ real” people. The personifications in dreams and imaginai dialogues are n o t always or only by-products o f “schizoid operations”— “a splitting o f the ego in the service o f defense, with a consonant splitting o f a fundam ental, core object th a t was libidinally invested and yet frustra ting at the same tim e” (Kem berg, 1980, 61). F rom the R om antic p o in t o f view person ify ing , w hich occurs naturally in dream s, m yth, poetry, and play, is a process which underlies thinking and is reflective o f the poetic nature o f the m ind. I t is no t merely th a t the m ind can conjure up figures to rep resen t abstract ideas, but that Virtue, Evil and their respective hordes appear as persons.

T hus H illm an defines personifying as “ the spontaneous experi­encing, envisioning and speaking o f the configurations o f existence as psychic presences” (1975b, 12), and differentiates it from person i­fication, anim ism , and an thropom orph ism . Anim ism and an th ro p o ­m orph ism imply that the im aginer has m ade certain category errors by either attributing living soul to inanim ate objects or by projecting hum an attributes to inhum an form s. W ith the term personification , the em phasis is on the se lf’s attribution o f its own characteristics to a th ing o r abstraction .

W ordsw orth criticized earlier poets such as D ryden, Gray, and C ow per for using personifying as a rhetorical device, and thereby denying its relig ious d im ension . F or C o leridge and W o rdsw orth , personification , as anim ism and symbolism, were “ to move and please the reader” and were “natural expressions o f the ‘creative im agination’” (A bram s, 1953, 292). T hese im aginai o th e rs w ere n o t m oved as pu pp ets , b u t were experienced as autonom ously affecting their lis­tener. Recently W ordsworth’s criticism has been resumed in the writings o f Jung and Hillm an. Both stress th a t imaginai o thers appear n o t just th rough conscious attem pts to personify, bu t are experienced at times as being outside o f and independent o f o n e’s conscious agency. In their trea tm ent o f imaginai others there is no pressure for experience to con fo rm to a theory o f projection (i. e., for such o thers to be even tually exp erienced as se lf o r as c rea ted by self.) In s tead it is em phasized th a t the experience o f self changes th rough dialogue

IMAGINATION A S REALITY 71w ith an im aginai o th e r. I t seem s as th o u g h th e im aginai o th e r is creating the self, as m uch as the self is creating the im aginai other. These imaginai persons bring us up as surely as our parents, no t simply as substitutes for our parents, b u t as com panions in im aginai worlds. A nd it is no t only children w ho invite im aginai o thers to the dinner table. Machiavelli had im aginary d inner conversations w ith historical personages (Hillman, 1975b, 199). Petrarch w rote letters to the em i­nences o f classical antiquity. Landor (1915) wrote volumes o f imaginai dialogues betw een sages and stars o f d ifferen t centuries. Pablo Casals (1967) to ld his listeners, “Bach is my best friend.” I t seems art, dram a, poetry, music, as well as the spontaneous appearance o f personifica­tions, keep us in conversation w ith im aginai others. F rom this po in t o f view these imaginai o thers affect our in teractions w ith “actual” o thers just as surely as the o ther way around.

W hereas psychoanalysis has tried to cope w ith the differences betw een actual and imaginai o thers by saying the imaginai is a rep re ­sentative o f an external reality, o ther psychological theorists such as Jung and M elanie Klein have taken o ther routes. E ach no ticed that imaginai o thers and their scenarios cannot be accounted for even by a detailed exam ination o f the perso n ’s experience in the social and external world. For each it was necessary to posit som e o ther factor apart from internalization to explain the deviations betw een the real and the imaginai. For Jung, this was accom plished by his no tion o f archetypes: one inherits form s th rough w hich one experiences. T he form is distinct from and prio r to experience, although dependent on experience for its expression as a particular image. D ue to K lein’s em phasis on biology, her puzzlem ent at the discrepancy betw een children’s imaginai family figures and their actual parents was pu t to rest by a theory o f instinct. In her m odel the pow erful life and death instincts reshape experience to form ulate the character o f particular im aginai o thers and their scenes.

B oth o f these theorists in troduce a factor, logically p rio r to expe­rience in the external world, which a ttem pts to account for the fact that imaginai others are no t always representations o f “actual” others. In each theory, as in Rom antic no tions o f m ind, the m ind does n o t just passively receive external images b u t has a role in actively co n stru c t­ing “w hat is done w ith w hat is seen” (Abrams, 1953, 57). For Klein this constructive capacity o f m ind po in ted to biological substrata.

72 CRITIQUE OF CONTEMPORARY APPROACHESFor Jung, it po in ted tow ard the universals o f m yth, religion and art. T he basic similarity o f these moves, despite their apparent difference, is suggested by one o f Klein’s students, W. R. Bion. While Klein advanced the postu la te th a t children have an innate know ledge o f the genitals o f b o th sexes and o f sexual in tercourse, B ion (1962, 1963) elaborated this by “postu la ting an innate p reconcep tion o f the O edipus m yth” (K em berg, 1980, 41).

In all three cases— Klein, Jung, Bion— one is struck by a similarity o f in tu ition: fantasies canno t be understoo d solely w ith reference to a p rocess o f in ternalization , th a t the con ten ts o f fantasy go beyond the child’s experience, and th a t they do so in ways that can be classi­fied by the observer in to certain com m on patterns or structures. T he prob lem o f how fantasy and its persons can go beyond experiences in the social realm is usually approached by way o f som e innate co n ­tribu tion , and this usually leads to som e m ythical conception: a death instinct, archetypes, innate myths. T he final conceptualization often obscures the validity o f the initial observation , namely, th a t there is a lim it to w hat the processes o f in ternalization and the m echanism s o f defense can account for in the life o f the imaginai.

T his does n o t m ean to underestim ate the contribu tions o f our psychoanalytic understandings o f defense and in ternalization. T hese have prov ided the theory and technique th a t guide the daily practice o f psychotherapy. N or, in suggesting that developm ent does no t always coincide w ith an increasing realism, do we deny the fact that this is often the case. Let us agree for now with the object relations theorists in their insistence th a t there is a developm ent from polarized (“black or w hite”) figures to m ore com plexly drawn, m ultidim ensional figures. But, w hereas their argum ent rests on im aginai figures replicating the com plexity o f actual hum an beings, our agreem ent will rest on how added com plexity increases the power, autonom y, and differentiation o f the im aginai as sym bolic in Jung’s sense. This increasing com plex­ity in characterization need no t necessarily balance ou t good and bad qualities. In the im aginai, evil and good figures can exist in great com plexity o f delineation. T here is still room for the Q ueen o f the N ight, for M ephistopheles, and the Virgin Mary.

I f personification is seen as an aspect o f mind which arises naturally rather than only as a result o f schizoid operations, then m ultiplicity o f figures is viewed differently. For Fairbairn the ego is at first unitary

IMAGINATION A S REALITY 73and pristine, then under environm ental stress it splits in to various voices. T his becom es exacerbated in schizoid conditions. T hus posi­tive developm ent is equated w ith a reduction o f this splitting o f the endopsychic structures. A dding m ore characters w ould seem to be negative. In this m odel m ultiplicity is the result o f a pathognom ic process resulting in representations that are one-sided and superficial. But w hat if the b irth o f a new character (or set o f new characters!) was seen n o t as serving a defensive function , bu t one o f symbolic represen tation? W hat if m ultiplicity o f characters was n o t conceived o f as synonym ous w ith shallowness o f character? Even if person i­fication does firs t o ccu r as a p ro cess o f defense , as a re ac tio n to ex ternal reality and its frustrations, need it continue to serve only as this? W hen personifying is construed positively as a sym bolic event, then developm ent does n o t coincide with a shift from m ultiplicity to in tegration in to one, b u t w ith awareness o f multiplicity.

G iven psychoanalysis’ original concern w ith patho logy and its com m itm ent to the priority o f the external and the m aterial, focus on the imaginai has m ost o ften involved a set o f concerns abou t differ­entiating “pathological” from non-pathological phenom ena: halluci­nation from percep tion , a concrete understanding o f im ages from a m etaphorical one, “unrealistic” represen tations from realistic ones. F rom the psychoanalytic perspective, imaginai life results from in ter­nalization o f the external w orld and this process is itself seen in a pathological light, as we have described. This eye for patho logy which derogates the products o f internalization contrasts sharply with M ead’s positive construal o f the creation o f the self and its in ternal world th ro u g h in te rn a liz a tio n . To use psychoanaly tic co n cep ts to study imaginai dialogues thus implicidy reduces the phenom enon to concern w ith pathology. Reality testing becom es the pivotal activity.

For Freud psychical reality, the reality o f the im agination, was bo th derivative from and subordinate to external reality. I t had no truly independent status as a reality. I f we see some imaginai dialogues as creative— w hich does n o t rule ou t their having borrow ed elem ents from actual co n v ersa tio n s and p eo p le— th en we are co n fro n ted with various m odes o f the real which may be hierarchically organized in different ways depending on the preferred goal in a specific situation.

Casey argues that F reud’s conception o f reality was too narrow to include the richness o f his own observations about psychical reality.

74 CRITIQUE OF CONTEMPORARY APPROACHESH e p rop oses th a t a m ore adequate m odel w ould acknow ledge the validity o f tw o d ifferen t types o r m odes o f reality: objective and ex­periential. “ O bjective reality” would denote that:

...rea lm o f defin ite entities— m aterial, social, or even psychological— regarded as potential objects o f scientific knowledge. T he objectively real would be that towards which a consensus o f impartial inquirers tends. In Peirce’s m odel, these inquiries “converge” on the objectively real w ithout always, or perhaps ever, attaining it as such. This kind o f reality is no t always or necessarily experienced) it may possess only posited or constructed status w ithout losing its objectivity. In any case, the idea o f objective reality allows both for Freud’s concern for scientific ob ­jectivity and for his skepticism with regard to the ultimate knowability o f the real. (Casey, 1971-72, 684)

W hile realism may be the developm ental m easure for objective reality, it is n o t always for experiential reality. T he m other figure w ho rapes the dream er in a dream or waking dream could be entirely at odds w ith objective reality, and yet capture an experiential reality in a m o st ap t and p o ig n an t way. As Casey p o in ts o u t, th e sh ift from objective to experiential reality entails a shift in the nature o f rep re ­sentations from being indicative to being expressive (1971-72, 687).

The Real as Inclusive o f the Imaginaihen im agination is seen purely as a substitu te for a deficientexternal reality, then it is derogated for its wishing. W ishing is

seen as a childish affair that in tervenes in the attem pt to adapt to reality. I t is a sign o f inability or unwillingness to make peace with “w hat is,” w ith w hat is real. W hen im agination is seen as creative o f realities, wish is construed positively as a longing that gives rise to this creation. From this po in t o f view imaginai dialogues do no t merely am elio ra te a h arsh reality b u t are active in the c o n s tru c tio n o f im aginai realities.

An illustration o f this creation o f o ther realities th rough wish and longing and the imaginai dialogues that result is given in C orb in’s (1969, 1980) trea tm ent o f Ibn ‘Arabi and Avicenna, mystics o f the ten th and eleventh centuries. The relevance o f C orb in’s studies, as docum ents o f psychology and no t just o f history o f religions, is that he sough t n o t to p resen t Avicenna per se, b u t the Avicennean experi­

IMAGINATION A S REALITY 75

ence. H e is in terested in the “m ode o f percep tio n” and o f being implicit in Avicenna’s work (Corbin, 1980, 8). In the Persian mysticism o f Ib n ‘Arabi and Avicenna, im aginai dialogues betw een m en and their angels form the central experience around w hich a cosm ology o f levels and w orlds revolves. O ne com es to know oneself th rough com ing to know o n e’s Lord, o n e’s Angel. E ach person and Angel com es in to being th rough the o ther, n o t all at once, bu t gradually th rough being w ith each other. In Ibn ‘A rab i’s words,

We have given H im to m anifest H im self th rough us, whereas He has given us (to exist through Him). Thus the role is shared between Him and u s ... I f He has given us life and existence by His being, I also give Him life by knowing Him in my heart.

T he voice o f his Angel said to him,I f then you perceive me, you perceive yourself. But you cannot perceive me through yourself. I t is through my eyes that you see me and see yourself, T hrough your eyes you cannot see me. (From Ibn ‘A rabi’s Book of Theophanies, quoted in Corbin, 1969, 127, 114)

For Ibn ‘Arabi, to re turn to o n e’s Lord is to “ re turn to his se lf” “ to yourself as you are know n by your L ord” (Corbin 1969, 253). In “prayer there is betw een G od and his faithful n o t so m uch a sharing o f roles as a situation in which each by tu rns takes the role o f the o ther” (264). Prayer is “a dialogue in which the two parties continually exchange ro les” (269).

Were it no t that Ibn ‘A rabi’s and A vicenna’s in terlocu tors were Angels or Lords— were their in terlocu to rs reduced to represen tations o f “ actual” o thers— we m ight hear echoes o f G .H. Mead in these thoughts. For did no t Mead believe th a t the Self is created th rough the child’s transit in to o thers’ perspectives on him? O f course many in M ead’s time argued that his system was implicitly religious, that the “generalized o th e r” was n o t sim ply an am algam ation o f the society’s po in ts o f view, bu t represen ted G od. O f this Mead could n o t be convinced. T he opposing in terpretations o f course issued from conflicting ontological commitments: the secular and the non-secular.

In the systems o f belief which C orbin presents, im aginai dia­logue is prayer. Prayer is no t a request for som ething, it is “a m eans

76 CRITIQUE OF CONTEMPORARY APPROACHESo f existing and o f causing to exist, th a t is, a m eans o f causing the G od w ho reveals H im self to appear, o f ‘seeing’ H im .” H e is seen n o t as H e is, “ in His essence,” bu t in “ the fo rm ” which this pe rso n ’s being o r consciousness calls out. T hus the G od does n o t exist in and o f H im self w ith fixed qualities, b u t exists th rough dialogue w ith a particular m an. “N o theophany is possible except in the form corre ­spo nd ing to the p red isp o sitio n o f the sub jec t” w ho receives the theophany (Corbin, 1969, 270).

In the psychological models we have been treating, the others of the everyday material world are given primacy. Imaginai others are derived. In many religious systems, God is primary and creates people. In Ibn ‘Arabi’s system man and God co-create each other. It is longing that begins prayer— both G od’s prayer to see Himself in a mirror which sees Him and man’s prayer to become such a mirror (Corbin, 1969, 261). When one does not yet see one’s Lord in his heart, he is urged to pray as though he saw Him, and in so doing to create the situation of longing in which the Angel appears.16

In the Avicennean and Suhrawardian recitals translated by Corbin, the developm ent o f the relation to the Angels is recoun ted , beg in­ning w ith exodus from the m aterial w orld, to an encoun ter w ith the Angel and the A ngel’s world (1980, 32). T hese recitals record the dia­logues betw een person and im aginai in terlocu tor. T he world o f the Angels and the events th a t transpire there are symbolic in the sense earlier discussed: “ the sym bol is no t an artificially constructed ‘sign’”; it announces “ som eth ing th a t canno t be expressed otherw ise; it is the unique expression o f the th ing sym bolized” (Corbin, 1980, 30). W hen the a tten tion returns to events in the everyday w orld, this symbolic awareness raises everyday events to the level o f the dream . This is, o f course, the same direction o f th ou gh t taken in the Italian Renais­sance by peo p le such as F icino. In s tead o f seeing an o p p o s itio n betw een the imaginai and the real, an analogical m ode was suggested in which the real is viewed as imaginai and the imaginai as real, reality as a dream and dream as reality. For Ficino the world is thus a theater (Cope, 1973, 77). For Novalis, “ the W orld becom es the D ream , the

16 A Contem porary author, Marilynne Robinson, puts it this way in her novel Housekeeping (1980, 152-153): “ For to wish for a hand on one’s hair is all but to feel it. So whatever we may lose, very craving gives it back to us again. Though we dream and hardly know it, longing, like an angel fosters us, sm ooths our hair, and brings us wild strawberries.”

IMAGINATION A S REALITY 77D ream the W orld” (quoted in Cope, 1973).

Instead o f the real and the imaginai being opposed as the im agi­nai d istorts, condenses, rearranges and negates the real, it is though t th a t th rough the imaginai the truer nature o f the real is m anifested. It is the in term ediate universe— the universe betw een pure spirit and the physical, sensible w orld— which is the w orld o f the sym bol and o f imagining. In it spirits becom e corporealized and bodies spiritual­ized. T his in term ediate w orld, ‘alam al m ithal, the “mundus imaginalis,” “ corresponds to a precise m ode o f percep tio n” which is imaginative pow er or percep tion (Corbin, 1972, 1). C orbin reflects his au tho rs’ in ten tions by arguing that this m ode o f percep tion , though n o t sense percep tion or intellectual intu ition, is nonetheless every bit as real, or even m ore real. In this m ode o f percep tion developm ent is no t a tten ­d an t to d e -p e rso n ific a tio n , to pu re logic o r ab s tra c t th o u g h t, to assimilating the imaginai other into the self, or forsaking him in loyalty to objective reality. D evelopm ent has to do rather w ith attaining a state o f m ind, th rough longing, in which personifying occurs spo n ta­neously. T he resulting figures are n o t considered “ im aginary” but “ im aginai,” in o rder to indicate that they are n o t unreal. For Corbin these im aginai o thers are part o f the real, w here the real is defined m ore largely than our m odern W estern conception o f it. D ialogues w ith the “A ngels” o f im aginai reality, far from being sym ptom atic o f pathology, are understood as teaching one to hear the events o f the everyday symbolically and metaphorically.

T h e relevance o f th ese ideas to ou r ow n psycho logy is best expressed by C orbin himself:

Let us not make any mistake and simply state that our precursors in the West conceived imagination too ratio- nalistically and too intellectualistically. Unless we have access to a cosmology structured similarly to that of the traditional Oriental philosophers, with a plurality of uni­verses arranged in ascending order, our imagination will remain out of focus, and its recurrent conjunctions with our will to power will be a never-ending source of horrors.In that event, we would be confining ourselves to looking for a new discipline o f the Imagination. It would, how­ever, be difficult to find such a new discipline, as long as we continue to see in it no more than a way of getting a certain distance to what is called reality and a way of act­

78 CRITIQUE OF CONTEMPORARY APPROACHESing upon reality. Now, this reality we feel is arbitrarily lim ited as soon as we com pare it to the reality described by our traditional theosophers, and this lim itation degrades reality itself. (1972, 16)

I t is beyond the scope o f this book to describe how the historical pressures o f Christianity and the rise o f science narrowed the prevailing conception o f reality to exclude imaginai figures. Let it suffice to say that as long as reality is defined this narrowly, imaginai dialogues will be seen as either a m eans to adapt to that delim ited reality or as a nuisance thw arting the desired adaptation— and our view o f o ther possible functions o f the imaginai will be distorted . F rom this con ­stricted view o f reality such dialogues becom e m erely one am ong o ther ways to rehearse future social discourse, practice language skills, guide behavior. In psychotherapy this view results in such practices as teaching schizophrenics and hyperactive children to talk to them ­selves to gu ide th e ir feelings and b eh av io r and to ad ap t to the dem an ds o f ex ternal social reality. (See M eichenbaum , 1977 and M eichenbaum and G oodm an , 1979.)

O nce we open up reality to include the poetic, the dram atic, and the spiritual, the developm ent o f our relations w ith im aginai figures can no longer be confined to our custom ary notions. D evelopm ent itse lf need s to be reconceived . A d ap ta tio n to reality changes its meaning, as reality becomes no t just the sensible, material, and external reality, b u t created and im aginai realities as well. A daptation with regard to a redefined no tion o f reality would no longer reflect a p ri­m arily “utilitarian , ‘survival’— or ‘ach ievem ent’ o rien ted co n tex t” (H erron and Sutton-Sm ith, 1971, 2), bu t would include form ing a relation to sym bolic and expressive m odes o f thought. Sutton-Sm ith argues this po in t o f view with respect to symbolic play, which is am ong the first sites o f im aginai dialogues. Play, he argues, is n o t solely a cognitive (nor affective or conative) function bu t “an expressive form sui generis w ith its own unique pu rp ose” (Sutton-Sm ith, 1971, 341). “Reverie and creative im agination have to do,” he says, “w ith m ore novel form s o f adap ta tion” (331). They are creative o f realities and not just deficient ones expressive o f the child’s inability to accom m odate h im self to external reality or failure to relinquish a position o f ego- centricity. They are creative o f alternate realities, o f symbolic and m etaphorical realities.

IMAGINATION A S REALITY 79C orbin is n o t p resen ted here to advocate a religious p o in t o f

view w ith regard to imaginai dialogues. T he virtue o f the system he describes is that it begins w ith the experience o f the im aginai o ther and illu stra tes how, w h en th is ex p erience is engaged , th e re can develop a metaphorical way o f thinking, a reflection between m undane and im aginai realities th a t enriches them both . T he developm ental theories dealt w ith earlier approach imaginai dialogues from a theory o f p ro jection w hich too quickly m oves from the experience o f the figures to explanatory principles. I f one lingers w ith the experience o f the figures’ autonom y, as C orb in’s poets did, developm ent is seen in term s o f the m anner o f relating to the figures, ra ther than the gradual reabsorp tion and disappearance o f the figures suggested by the psychological theories we have discussed.