Jung’s early work with word associations did not rest with quantifying results; he personified them. He discovered complexes which were invested with feeling, intention, autonomy, and fragments of consciousness. They were independent entities because they behaved as such. The same complex can alter the association of words, show itself as unwanted symptoms, and appear as a person in a dream. Dream persons are complexes walking around; symptoms are the irruption of these persons into our normal lives. Our personal complexities are indeed the persons of our complexes.
Where other psychologists might have used a so-called objective and neutral language of numbers, structures, or functions to account for the
same disturbances, Jung reverted courageously to the direct mode of personifying which in his day was still considered a primitive formulation.” He stood firmly by his method of naming, explicitly comparing
it with the spontaneous speech of the insane and the noncivilized. What was radically courageous then we now take for granted, so easily imagining ourselves to play roles, enter into games, and be composed of
different characters.
James Hillman , are-Visioning Psychology pg.21/22
one’s head, and yet also conveys a vague sense of interiority, a sense of soul.”
~James Hillman
The answer is: fantasy- images. “Image is psyche, ” says Jung. “The psyche consists essentially of images . … a
“picturing’ of vital activities.” In the beginning is the image; first imagination then perception; first fantasy then reality. Or as Jung puts it: “The psyche creates reality
every day. The only expression I can use for this activity is fantasy. “
Man is primarily an imagemaker and our psychic substance consists of images; our being is imaginal being, an existence in imagination. We are indeed such stuff as dreams are made on. Since we can know only fantasy-images directly and immediately , and from these images create our worlds and call them realities, we live in a world that is neither “inner” nor
“outer.” Rather the psychic world is an imaginal world, just as image is psyche. Paradoxically, at the same time these images are in us and we live in the midst of them. The psychic world is experienced empirically as inside us and yet it encompasses us with images. I dream and experience my dreams as inside me and yet at the same time I walk around in my dreams and am inside them.
James Hillman
basic reality of fantasy.
~James Hillman
BlissNinja 