I understand your point.jacob wrote: ↑Tue Apr 18, 2023 8:34 amEhh, maybe this comes down to semantics, but I disagree with the choice of the imagination word. Intuition is rooted in some framework in that it subconsciously follows its laws. For example, a mathematician will use intuition based on previous mathematical understanding to "intuit" what the proof of a new theorem might very feel look like and then knowing the goal start computing the intermediate steps from theorem to QED. A better example might be a good chess player that recognizes a good structure out of millions of future positions and only then calculates the moves to get there.
Imagination (as I understand it) is intuition without rules or that structure. Imagination lets people make up whatever they want. Intuition does not.
To be sure, it is not a question of substituting a word/concept with another, but of making the distinction/differentiation clearer.
Okay, I took a quick stab at C. G. Jung's Psychological Types, and I see he himself acknowledges that "The peculiarity of intuition is that it is neither sense perception, nor feeling, nor intellectual inference, although it may also appear in these forms.", Here is the "full" quote:
INTUITION (L. intueri, ‘to look at or into’). I regard intuition as a basic psychological function (q.v.). It is the function that mediates perceptions in an unconscious way. Everything, whether outer or inner objects or their relationships, can be the focus of this perception. The peculiarity of intuition is that it is neither sense perception, nor feeling, nor intellectual inference, although it may also appear in these forms. In intuition a content presents
itself whole and complete, without our being able to explain or discover how this content came into existence. Intuition is a kind of instinctive apprehension, no matter of what contents. Like sensation (q.v.), it is an irrational (q.v.) function of perception. As with sensation, its contents have the character of being “given,” in contrast to the “derived” or “produced” character of thinking and feeling (qq.v.) contents. Intuitive knowledge possesses an intrinsic certainty and conviction, which enabled Spinoza (and Bergson) to uphold the scientia intuitiva as the highest form of knowledge. Intuition shares this quality with sensation (q.v.), whose certainty rests on its physical foundation. The certainty of intuition rests equally on a definite state of psychic “alertness” of whose origin the subject is unconscious.
In Eligio Stephen Gallegos' words: Jung was in a peculiar position in that he was highly intuitive and his imagery was very powerful. Furthermore, his intuition, i.e., knowing things beyond the present moment and circumstance and for which there is no immediate evidence, came to him through his imagery. So it is not surprising that he didn't differentiate the two. It is clear that his life's purpose was to help Western humankind return to the window of imagery as a valid mode of knowing.
Gallegos also has this relevant footnote about intuition:
C. G. Jung. Psychological Types, Volume 6 of the Collected Works of C. G. Jung, Princeton University Press, 1921, quoted from The Portable Jung, Viking, 1971, p.221. Jung speaks of intuition as being "the function of unconscious perception” (Ibid, P. 220). Intuition may, in fact, derive from the interrelated functioning of all modes of knowing, analogous to the experience of depth that results from using both eyes simultaneously rather than only one eye, or each eye alternately. Intuition would then essentially be a depth of knowing that emanates from the harmony of all four modes, and as such could appear in the guise of any of them, and to a greater or lesser extent depending upon the degree of alignment.
In "Animals of the four windows", there is also a chapter called "Intuition as a dimension in itself".
I think he is really making a compelling argument for imagination as the fourth mode of consciousness/window of knowing, without invalidating the importance and function of intuition.
Would that be the case, incidentally, this could have implications for a personality model that relies on intuition as being one of the modes, such as MBTI.
ON [ACTIVE] IMAGINATION AND MAKING THINGS UP
In Jungian Robert A. Johnson's book "Inner Work : Using Dreams and Active Imagination for Personal Growth", he relates an episode with a client of his who came to do analysis, and at first nothing was happening. He could remember no dreams, and there was no significant discussion, He then taught him Active Imagination, and after a failed attempt, explained again to him the steps and asked him to “Go do something in your imagination—anything! Just record it in your journal. We will start from there.”
The next week he returned, and he had that gleam in his eye again. I knew he was up to something. He put down a couple of pages of Active Imagination. It was hair-raising material. It was pure melodrama, a combination of The Perils of Pauline and two generations of Peyton Place all rolled into one.
After that, week after week, he brought his pages of Active Imagination. The events got more intense, more desperate. It was huge battles of darkness against light, villains and victims, persecuted heroines, scandalous intrigues, and betrayals. The poor girl was jumping from ice floe to ice floe with babe in arms, crossing the river with the villain in hot pursuit. Week after week this went on, and I said very little. It was registering, but I watched to see where all this inner drama was leading, what was going to distill out of it.
One day he came in and dramatically threw down the last installment of the Active Imagination. There I read a terrible, but also marvelous, denouement of the plot that had been developing all this time. When I finished reading he said: “There, you bloody idiot! I’ve been pulling your leg the whole time. I’ve been making the whole thing up just to make a fool out of you. There wasn’t a word of truth in it!”
I said nothing […], I just sat and waited. I looked at him, and I’ll never forget the change that came over his face. The triumphant expression changed slowly to one of horror. Tears came to his eyes. He said: “Damn you, damn you, damn you! You tricked me. It was all true, and I didn’t know it.” Then he just fell apart.
You see, even when he was trying to conjure up his “fake” story in order to fool me and ridicule the whole process, that “fake” story had to come out of his own insides, his own psychological “guts,” as it were. While he thought he was inventing something, he was spilling out the secret contents of his interior being.
That horrible villain in the story was none other than the rogue who gave him the sly gleam in his eye, who controlled him so much from hidden places —the same rogue who believed that the whole point of analysis was to make an ass out of the analyst. The persecuted heroines were none other than his own inner feminine side: His inner life and feeling life were consigned to the ice floes. All the intrigues, innocent victims, tragedies, and adventures were an involuntary reflection of the horrible conflicts that raged within his own soul.
He had tried to fake it. But accidentally, in the process he did his Active Imagination. He experienced the symbols from the unconscious. Finally, his Active Imagination brought him face-to-face with his inner self. He was never quite the same again.
Whenever I start a patient on Active Imagination, I get a series of questions: “How do I know that I’m not just making all this stuff up?” “How can I talk with someone who is only a figment of my imagination?” From my experience I am convinced that it is nearly impossible to produce anything in the imagination that is not an authentic representation of something in the unconscious. The whole function of the imagination is to draw up the material from the unconscious, clothe it in images, and transmit it to the conscious mind. Whatever comes up in the imagination must have been living somewhere in the fabric of the unconscious before it was given an image-form by the imagination.
Even if a person is frivolous and deliberately tries to fabricate something, to conjure up something silly and stupid, to imagine a pure fiction, the material that comes up through the imagination still represents some hidden part of that individual. It can’t be made up from thin air. It has to come from somewhere inside the person who is producing the images.
The real question is not the authenticity of the images, but rather, What do I do with them? It is easy to misunderstand them and misuse them. But most people never get to the real question of what to do with the revelation from the unconscious because they are so stuck in doubting its authenticity.
[…]
If you feel that you are talking to yourself, excellent! If you feel you are “making it up,” as my sly patient did, that is fine. Whatever you make up will come from your unconscious; it will be one of your interior personalities speaking. All that is required, ultimately, is that you write down what you have to say, write down what the interior persons have to say, and write down what you do together. When you begin to see your imagination for what it really is, you will realize that it reflects the inner world of your unconscious as faithfully as a highly polished mirror.
What about individuation, Jung’s metaphor for the innate drive toward wholeness? I don't think Jung's work with the unconscious and the imaginal to be solely pertinent for and directed at people with "bad mental constructs" or non "well-working brains". It is relevant to every individual, and his is not necessarily a pathology oriented psychology.jacob wrote: ↑Tue Apr 18, 2023 8:34 amYeah, but Jung works with subconsciously generated problems wherein people have [for whatever reason] formed bad mental constructs that they are not aware of. This is not the case for a well-working brain. Looking at dreams may be the only way to unlock structures that people have subconsciously repressed. However, dreams and Rorshack tests are not exactly what drives a well-constructed mind. As a physicist I have on occasion dreamed in equations and while those equations made sense to me while I was sleeping, they were junk when I woke up. Conversely, I do not intuit/imagine that level of junk imagery in a waking state.
Also, I'd wager that many [scientific and otherwise] discoveries, inventions and other leaps [as well as the occasional equation] have originated/emerged from imagination (including sleeping dreams) and not merely thinking.
But of course, imagination/intuition can't replace thinking and will fail [often spectacularly] when asked to perform its functions in its stead.
From my previous Bill Plotkin quote, I want to stress the following:
Each of the four [thinking, feeling, sensing and imagining or even intuition] is of equal power and importance in living a balanced and creative life. Each is a distinct faculty not reducible to any of the other three.
Problems may arise when we rely on (culturally and personally) overgrown thinking to handle "on its own" situations that require the input of other psychological functions/modes of knowing.
Jacob, do you agree with this assessment or would you rather tackle everything almost exclusively through thinking?
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There is a lot more to say with regards to imagination, but I'll stop here for now, with apologies about the lengthy post!