Jung’s Technique of Active Imagination and Desoille’s Directed Waking Dream Method brings together Carl Jung’s active imagination and Robert Desoille’s “rêve éveillé dirigé/directed waking dream” method (RED). It studies the historical development of these approaches in Central Europe in the first half of the 20th century and explores their theoretical similarities and differences, proposing an integrated framework of clinical practice.
The book aims to study the wider European context of the 1900s which influenced the development of both Jung’s and Desoille’s methods. This work compares the spatial metaphors of interiority used by both Jung and Desoille to describe the traditional concept of inner psychic space in the waking dreams of Jung’s active imagination and Desoille’s RED. It also attempts a broader theoretical comparison between the procedural aspects of both RED and active imagination by identifying commonalities and divergences between the two approaches.
This book is a unique contribution to analytical psychology and will be of great interest for academics, researchers and post-graduate students interested in the use of imagination and mental imagery in analysis, psychotherapy and counselling. The book’s historical focus will be of particular relevance to Jungian and Desoillian scholars since it is the first of its kind to trace the connections between the two schools and it gives a detailed account of Desoille’s early life and his first written works.
This book was a Gradiva Award nominee for 2021.
Table of Contents
List of figures
Foreword by Christian Gaillard
Preface and acknowledgements
Introduction
Part 1
Active Imagination and the Directed Waking Dream
1 Active Imagination
2 Robert Desoille and the Rêve Éveillé Dirigé Method
3 Post-Jungian Developments on Active Imagination
4 Post-Desoillian Developments on the Directed Waking Dream Method
5 Jungians and the Directed Waking Dream: Orthodox and Unorthodox Perspectives
Part II
Jung and Desoille – a Historical Investigation
6 Theoretical Influences on Jung and Desoille
7 Jung and Desoille: Sharing Common Colleagues
8 Unacknowledged European Imaginative Therapeutic Practitioners
9 Jungians Bridging Differences with Desoillians
Part III
Comparing RED and Active Imagination
10 The Concept of Interiority and its Development in Western Europe
11 On spatial metaphors of interiority
12 Conceptualising A Theoretical Comparison of RED and Active Imagination
13 A Theoretical Comparison of RED and Active Imagination: Getting Started, Preparation of the Body and Directivity by the Analyst
14 A Theoretical Comparison of RED and Active Imagination: Transferential issues, Narrative style and Interpretation in the Middle and Final Phase of Treatment
Conclusion
Bibliography
Appendix
Index