Jungian Books

The combined edition, aptly titled Opening to the Imaginal: Waking Dreams and Invisible
Guests, promises to be a remarkable addition to our collection. This marks the third title published
in this series, following Verena Kast’s “Father-Daughter, Mother-Son” (Summer 2022) and Polly
Young-Eisendrath’s “Women and Desire: Beyond Wanting to Be Wanted” (Spring 2023).
The book, published independently by JUNGIANEUM with careful consideration of affordability,
is offered in paperback (14,99€/£/UDS) and ebook (4,99 €/£/UDS). This decision aligns with our
commitment to making this valuable work accessible to readers worldwide at an affordable price.
Mary Watkins’ works, “Waking Dreams” and “Invisible Guests,” were initially published as
standalone books in 1976 and 1986. The skeleton of Waking Dreams was initially developed as
Watkins’ thesis at Princeton University and later revised while studying at the Jung Institute in
Zurich. Invisible Guests results from many additions and changes from Watkins’ doctoral
dissertation. Both books have evolved into classics for individuals delving into the realms of depth
psychology.
Waking Dreams: One can say that this book started with a nightmare and a waking dream on two
consecutive nights in January 1971. The first night, I awoke seeing only the color red … blood.
The next day at dawn, I awoke hearing a voice repeat over and over again, “To love is to listen; to
listen is to love.” The voice did not speak inside my mind; it came from beyond the window,
flowing into my bedroom just as dawn poured in, saturating the space with light and words in a
most uncanny way. You can well imagine both how awed I was by these words and how disturbed
I was that the prescribed spatial boundaries of our modern experiencing of the imaginal had been
ruptured. I was twenty at the time and, though a student of psychology, I did not know what to
make of these two very different visitations-from the rapist and the godlike voice. But whatever
age one is, the epiphany of the imaginal world-its landscapes and characters- is unsettling, often
deeply disturbing. Part of the disorientation one feels is native to the encounter with this other
world. For those of us, however, who are surrounded by science, the reverence for reason and the
belief in the materially and perceptually real leave us impoverished in knowing how to entertain
imaginal. We lack all the wisdom intrinsic to cultures that place imaginary experiences within the
religious, poetic, and mythic orientation. This book is an effort to understand these “waking dreams”
better.
Invisible Guests: We may find ourselves speaking with our reflection in the mirror, with the
photograph of someone we miss, with a figure from a dream or a movie, with our dog. And even
when we are outwardly silent, within the ebb and flux of our thought, we talk with critics, with our
mothers, our god(s), and our consciences; indeed, we do so just as steadily as we once spoke to
our dolls, our imaginary companions, the people of our painted pictures. We may find ourselves
as audience or as narrators to conversations among imaginal others not physically present but
actually experienced nonetheless. At times we may even notice ourselves playing more than one
role in these imaginal dialogues–now child, now old one, abandoned one. These imaginal
dialogues, their functions, and lines of development are the theme of this book.