Reviewed by Andreau Charles, LCSW, last updated October 2026
Active imagination is a Jungian practice of engaging consciously with images, feelings, or figures that arise in dreams and reverie. In therapy, it is used carefully and collaboratively rather than as a substitute for trauma-informed support.
In Jungian depth psychology, a guiding conviction distinguishes it from the therapies of adjustment: the remedy is found within the poison, a principle Jung drew from the alchemical tradition (Jung, 1955–1956/1970). The wound, honestly entered, contains the material of its own healing, and healing therefore requires what most people have organized their lives to avoid, a confrontation with the attitudes, ideas, and perceptions that once protected and now imprison. This conviction is not original to Jung. It belongs to healing traditions far older than depth psychology, traditions that understood descent as the price of restoration, and Jung’s contribution was to give it clinical form. Three instruments of that form carry the deep work in this Manhattan practice.
The Descent into the Shadow
The shadow holds what a person could not afford to feel at the time: the rage that was too dangerous, the grief that had no witness, the need that was punished into silence. Trauma is a prolific architect of shadow, and what it buries does not decompose. It waits, exerting influence on the life above it, and shadow work is the deliberate turn toward this buried material. Patients undertaking the descent expect to find only their worst contents. They find those, and they find what the tradition has always known: interred alongside the unbearable is the vital. Creativity, appetite, and force of personality go underground with the pain they were entangled in, and they are recoverable by no route except the one that leads down.
Active Imagination
Certain traumatic material may be difficult to reach through verbal reflection alone, particularly when it was laid down before language or beneath it. Active imagination is the tradition’s answer (Jung, 1916/1960): a disciplined practice of conscious engagement with the images, figures, and symbols the psyche produces in dream and reverie. The figure from the recurring dream is addressed rather than merely interpreted. The image is granted standing to respond. What sounds mystical in description is exacting in execution, and its clinical effect can be significant: experience that possessed no clear form may acquire one, and what has form can be met, understood, and gradually relieved of its charge. Patients learn the practice within the protection of the therapeutic relationship and retain it afterward as a permanent instrument.
A Composite Illustration
A patient returned repeatedly to a recurring dream figure, shadowed, at the edge of every dream, that she could never approach. Active imagination gave the material a way forward the verbal account alone could not: the figure was addressed directly, in a disciplined waking practice held within the safety of the therapeutic relationship, and over time it proved to be carrying grief she had not been permitted, as a child, to feel. What the figure guarded was not danger. It was vitality, recovered by the only route that led to it.
Clinical vignettes on this site are composites, constructed from recurring patterns of presentation, and identify no individual patient.
Individuation as Confrontation
Edinger (1972) understood individuation as requiring confrontation with the ideas and attitudes that imprison the personality, and trauma renders the requirement concrete. The wounded psyche organizes itself around its injuries, and those organizations calcify into what the person mistakes for their nature. Individuation traces the suffering to its source and holds the imprisoned material to a single sustained question: is this who you are, or is this what happened to you? The distinction, lived rather than merely comprehended, marks the difference between an undifferentiated personality and an individuated one.
The Container
None of this work unfolds in solitude, and the tradition is unsentimental about the reason. A psyche wounded in relationship heals in relationship, within a container steady enough to hold what the descent produces. The consulting room is constructed to be that container. Relationship is not the setting of this work. It is the instrument of it.
AREALE COUNSELING & WELLNESS offers depth psychotherapy in person in Midtown Manhattan and through secure telehealth across New York State. A free 15-minute virtual consultation is available to explore whether this approach is the right fit.
Related reading: From Shadow to Wholeness (https://arealecounselingandwellness.com/2024-03-21-from-shadow-to-wholeness-rediscovering-our-inherent-divine-worth/); How Depth Psychotherapy Works with the Unconscious (https://arealecounselingandwellness.com/how-depth-psychotherapy-works-with-the-unconscious/)
Frequently Asked Questions
What is active imagination?
Active imagination is a technique developed by Carl Jung for engaging consciously with images, figures, and feelings that arise from the unconscious, such as a recurring dream figure or a vivid mental image. Rather than only interpreting the image, the person, while awake and reflective, allows it to unfold and responds to it, sometimes through dialogue, writing, drawing, or physical expression. In therapy, it can give form to experience that is hard to put into words, including material from very early in life. Because it can bring up strong emotions, it is used carefully and collaboratively, and it does not replace trauma-informed support.
Why does shadow work matter for healing trauma specifically?
Trauma often forces a person to push feelings out of awareness in order to survive, such as rage that felt dangerous, grief that had no witness, or needs that were punished. In Jungian terms, that material enters the shadow. It does not disappear: it can resurface as anxiety, numbness, reactivity, or repeating relationship patterns. Shadow work is the gradual, supported process of turning toward this buried material and reintegrating it. Many patients find that along with painful feelings, they also recover capacities lost with them, including creativity, energy, and vitality. For trauma survivors, this work is paced carefully to avoid becoming overwhelming.
Does this kind of work happen alone, between sessions?
Some reflection between sessions, such as noting dreams or journaling, can support the work, but the deeper engagement with traumatic material is best done within therapy. Turning toward the shadow or practicing active imagination can stir strong emotions, and doing so without support can be destabilizing, especially for trauma survivors. The therapeutic relationship provides what Jungians call a container: a steady, safe space where difficult material can surface and be understood at a manageable pace. Because many wounds were formed in relationship, the relationship itself becomes part of how healing happens. Over time, patients often learn practices they can use independently.
References
Edinger, E. F. (1972). Ego and archetype: Individuation and the religious function of the psyche. G. P. Putnam’s Sons.
Jung, C. G. (1960). The transcendent function. In The structure and dynamics of the psyche (R. F. C. Hull, Trans.; Collected Works, Vol. 8). Princeton University Press. (Original work published 1916)
Jung, C. G. (1970). Mysterium coniunctionis (R. F. C. Hull, Trans.; Collected Works, Vol. 14, 2nd ed.). Princeton University Press. (Original work published 1955–1956)
Disclaimer
This article is for educational purposes and is not a diagnosis, medical advice, or a substitute for individualized mental-health care. If you are in immediate danger or thinking about harming yourself or someone else, call or text 988 in the United States or contact local emergency services.
Last reviewed: October 2026.
About the Author
Andreau Charles, LCSW, is the founder of AREALE COUNSELING & WELLNESS, an out-of-network depth psychotherapy practice in Midtown Manhattan serving high-achieving professionals, artists, and creatives, in person and through secure telehealth. His clinical work draws on more than 15 years of clinical experience, a postgraduate certification in advanced clinical practice from New York University, doctoral training in depth psychology, Pacifica Graduate Institute, and over five years of supervision from a senior Jungian analyst.