The Four-StepApproach to Active Imagination

Za Robert A. Johnson

"Inner work using dreams and active imagination for personal growth"

In the next few chapters I will present a four-step approach to Active Imagination that you can use to get yourself started. In this chapter we will talk about the approach overall and also about the things you need to do to set the stage for Active Imagination. For example, you need to know where you will work; you need to establish some privacy; and you need to decide how you are going to record your Active Imagination.

Here are the four steps:

1. Invite the unconscious

2. Dialogue and experience

3. Add the ethical element of values. 

4. Make it concrete with physical ritual

Dr. Maria Louise Von Franz has shown that Active Imagination naturally falls into four basic stages.* Different people will experience these stages in slightly different ways. I have tried, with these four practical steps, to formulate an orderly approach that will enable most people to find their way through the stages of Active Imagination without getting paralyzed or intimidated.

Just as with dream work, it helps greatly to have a set procedure, a series of steps you can follow in an orderly way, that will get you past the obstacles, confusion, and indecision that sometimes prevent people from getting started or following through.