Inaling of photocopies of the United States fs, This work maybe srg. MOTICE: The Copyright Law t Sf coryihted ma Aa Lmnagirn’ SAS) Soaps, TFC Lendon’. %¢ AO Asse ciate oF Poe TER SI., 124) - AN IMAGINAL EGO 764 * James Hitiman Good evening: Looking through the corxespondence, I see this talk has hhad many different titles, One was "On imagining a new ego"; one was “On building a new ego"; Ina third letter was written "Towards an imaginal ego", ‘These many citles emphasize how uncertain and projectoral is what Thave to say, But these titles do revolve around three things: something 0 do with ego, something to do with integination and something new. | ought to say further that I have litle to do with or eay about art. {don't even know what ike, I don’t have the courage of my owa bad taste to be a collector, not even to collect posteards; and most of my. ‘walls are staring walls, they doa't have anything on them.) I do look sat art objects sometimes, one can't help it. And most of the people who hhave come in and worked in the other chair - suxprisingly many of those people ~ have painted, or made things and I suppose we did “art therapy’ But I don't know much about art or art therapy. So you make your connexions between what I shall be saying and your business of art therapy 1'd like to begin with the idea, ego, There's a sentence in Freud, which I think is in his "Lectures on Peychoanalyaie!': ‘To strengthen the ego, to make It more independant fof the super ego, to widen its field of perception and enlarge its organisetion ¢0 that it ean appropriate fresh portions of the id, where fd was there shall ego be. Ics awork of culture, Strengthening the ego: that's the job, the professional work. So, Oedipus determines the therapeutic work as # culture hero and king. He deter= ‘mines not only the Freudian cantent of analysis but the impetus, the heroism, or "where id was there siall ego be". To make the ego bigger and stronger is a culture-hero fantasy, Then Fenichel in The Psycho: analytic Theory of Neurosis says, "the common denominator of all ‘neurotic phenomenon is an Insufficiency of the normal contol apparatus”, i.e. insufficiency of ego. I want to question this notion of strong eg0 and ‘weak ego. I'm sure you've all been put down for having a weak ego. One of the pet notions of our psychology, Including Jungian psychology, is that fone must have e strong ego to cope with the outer world, not to be over- helmed by images of the unconscious, not to be submerged, and so forth One has to have a strong ego not a wesk ego, ‘The very language of strength and weakness is « curious, rather muscular, language form, a language of the will. In general we have the {dea of a good strong healthy ego, somehow over end oppased to the id or the images of the unconscious, or something else. It becomes strong by opposing, go that the ego and the Imaginal ~ the Images, affects, fantasies, dreams, visions ~ are opposed. How did allthis happen? Let us look at the history of peychotogy. Therewe find that almost from the beginning, all soul was divided Into three parts, sometimes called head, heart and liver, or gold, silver and bronze, or thinking, willing and affect, Into this affective bog were put all kinds of things like sensation, imagination, intuition, feelings, emotions, and $0 fon, This three-part division goes on and on in many different eystems of ‘Western psychology. In the Catholic catechism {t's still there; the three powers of my soul are: my memory, my understanding, and my will. ‘Memory here is not of what happened yesterday; it has rather to do with the realm of imagination or immemorial eternal images. The memoria is sometimes called other things like divine eternal memory world. {t seems that from the very begining of Western peychologieal thought about the psyche, the fantasia_was not to he trusted, When the early Greek pallosophers divided the Way of Efuth and the way of opinion fantasy was a way of opinion, not of ‘truth, Right through Western psychology, in the official school psychologies, the affective realm, the memoria and imagination was pat down. For example, for the Stoics Reason was opposed to Fantasy; the good life was reason ruling or controlling fantasy. The ego, as it came to be called, became more and ‘more defined through the reason, the understanding, the intellect, the voluntas or the will. Ie did not include imagination, Imagination became ego alien It more or less got lost, until rediscovered and called the unconsciou ‘it had lost connexion with coneciousness ecause Let's go back to the strong ego. Does it have to be this way? Must it be that the ego does not include fantasy? There aze lots of definitions ofthis exo. Evesyloly Mlings tc around in one way or another. A very simple dettastion 1s «given by James Drever, the Seomtish psychologist, in hie little Penguin Dictionary of Psychology: "The individual's experience af himself.” You can ‘experience yourself in many ways but you do not have to have a strang will to experience yourself. Nor do you have to be rational to experience yourself, In Jung, rational functions are not necessary to 2 definition of ego. You do not have to judge; the will in Jung's definition of ego is simply the energy disposable to cconscious-ness. Having a etrong will or a lot of willpower is not necessarily required for the ego. In other words there is no theoretical difficulty in conceiving ‘of an ego independant of ite relation with will and reagon and even void of contents such as the canons of our culture, even void of the values and roles which we think belong to the ego. Ego strength and ego weakness can be determined apart from ‘these notions that we're used to and with which our egos become identified and which tend to characterise the definition of the ego, Perhaps true ego weakness - to use ‘that muscle word again - refers to severe disturbances of body mages, or where there's no-one there to experience in Drever's sense the "individual's experience of himself." Gut where the individual is not experiencing himself, we're talking about 4 condition that's way out from the usual sense of the weak ego.) We tend to believe that our modern Idea of the ego comes from Descartes and the cogito ergo sum. Ae I've just euggeeted it originates much earlier than that However, It hits psychotherapy in the middle of the last century, when this field "paychiatry” was invented, and when the language of psychopathology was invented (The therapeutic words, peychatherspy, psychopathology, psychiatry and a hundred ‘more were invented in the last century. Ihave written about thie at some lengthed 1970, "The Language of Psychology and the Ia France, one ofthe essesial people who steed the ies of he strong ogo vas s physician named Brouseas., He was a grea leecher, tho would apply upto S0 leeches at atime. He hed been a aezgeant snd tise ausgeon in Napoleon's army and then apefessor of payeiaric thoticine, He had immescurae fect on te Ides tat tao the Job of evehitrinte to reinforce “Le Mie, In Germany la 143, Griesnger vas the foun in uence tn hoptaljoycHlay. And he wove In is cox ook: ‘ll etfote are direvied towards the rehabilitation and strengthening the ald ich," (ie wrote thie standard important tex took when fe was 2 years Old.) Nudsle, the comparable igure In Eglend, ago was 28 ven be publtshed hie great ext beak. Maudsey there aye: “Tsanlty marke 2 Eure in orguniome” adaptation to external nature, Tete the rel of tvidence of discord betreen man and bis surroundings, He eat tend Circumstances co hinge, nov accommodate himoef to srennatances” See, the kind of person one shouldbe: on shouldbe able tat or fo tend circumstances inthe sth eentary syle. This was writen i 86 Griesinger wae in 1845, and Brovsale alte caller lathe 1820's or 0s ‘The third part of the psyche, the imagination or the memoria was rediscovered by Freud, He traced memories, But he found out that these inemories he was tracing weren't real, had not ‘really’ happened, Fantasy caused the trouble, ‘The causes were imaginal, or imaginary, or fantastic, or affective. But they were notin the will, not in the reasoning, aot even real events in the sense of ego reality. Jung gave primary value to this third part too. However in these systeme and their off]enoote, which ere eo important for everybody wita is in the ‘shrink trade’ in one way or ancther, the old ego is retained. Everybody is still crying to get people to cope, be stronger, and not be overwhelmed, not be flattened, not be dissblved, not to be dismembered, disintegrated, by the imaginal reaim. And we still call the imaginal realm something negative We call it the unconscious, or the ixzational, or the insane. ‘There was of course another group of people who didn't see it this way; these are the Romantics, the Neo-Platonists, and the esoteric systems of philosophy ‘hat went parallel to the official schools af philosophy. Swedenborg, Ficiao in Taly, or the Cathars. ‘There is much firet rate peyehological and philosophical thinking which wasn't approved atthe Sorhonne or Oxford, 0 (¢ was always esoteric, outside of the mein Western tradition, The people who thought this ‘vay, like Bruno and others, had first rare heads, until somebody got hold of ‘hem and gave them the chop; (or they were burnt). Here was a tradition which ecognised the imaginal as belonging to the ego, as belonging to man's experience ‘and notion of "what f am." Moreover, for them the source of this imaginal realm ‘as not just within my head or within my skin, not a personal source; it had @ ythopoetic background, in ‘mages, the transcendent, the (mpersonal, Jung calls thie background archetypalYou can see an inevitable conflict between those who would say that the true nature of man is defined by his will and his reason, man a¢ @ rational animal and those ‘who would say that man is a poetic or mythical beng, Of course, I'm making the contrast as sharply as I can for the sake of making it as sharply as teen. The ego has come to be reason and will. Therapy in the languege of Griesinger, still aims to restore the old ego, and to readjust to a world which requires this kind of ego. Therapy has become the tool of the establishment; the first thing you do with @ child or wife or a parent if they're having wouble coping with the estab lishment, {s to send them in for therapy, And therapy has become supported By the establishment, In the United States there aze community health centres in ‘county after county supported by taxpayers money where the priests of this new secular religion take the people and adjust them back into the system, Therapy is a secular religion. But to conclude this litle pert: the imaginal world is, from ‘the main traditional view, always inferior, a secondary system, away from reallty because the ego defines reality in its owa terms, ‘The historical deformation of how we conceive our ego governs “the individual's experience of himself." ‘The historical deformation is perpetuated in our mont ‘meats. London sets these ego examples up on horses, with hats and swords, men of reason and will, heroes of paranoia, heroes of aggression, images to worship, ‘The Poets have but a Corner; few monuments to the imaginal ego In therapy it Is essential that we look at the complex which is the root of psychic life ‘The psyche is 2 complex phenomenon; we are a complexity and consist of complex fies. Jung calls these complexes "the little people” because they are the people you come home to at the end of the day when you sit by the fire, the complexes that you engage yourself with, who visit you in your dreams, the people you talk co when you on't know what to do; and they are the people who throw up your problems at you ‘They also throw up fantasies. In this sense the complex divides into two sides (On the one side the complex ig problem, a thing you have to solve, deal with, what to do, how, and s0 on. On the other side of the complex is the fantasy. A series of dreams and images and wishes, games that we play, fears, fletions and roles Gregory Bateson edited « book called Percival’ Narrative , an account of incarcer~ ation in an asylum in 1988 to 1840, The author tries to work oit what happened to him, ‘what was it all about, what was his meatal disorder. He says, “the spirit speaks poetically, but the man understands it literally.” The complex apeaka in fantasy, and wwe take (t'and turn it into a problem. Then the old ego cames along as a problem solver, The therapists become problem solvers, not fantasy-spinners. Now at last wwe reach art therapy. Art therapy does something diffezent - or it could, as long as it does not try t0 resolve problems, that is, as long as it leans more towards art and lees towards therapy. ‘Therapy does tend to turn fantasy into probleme, consequently, we find therapy a favourite with professional problem solvere, It ts curious how the field of psychoanalysis was taken up and integrated into history and society by the minister of religion, by the social workers and teachers -- people in the trades of problem=rot solving, helping, doing-good. Psychoanalysis was not taken up, happily and favourably, by people in the tmaginal professions, paltters, writers, poets. Of course, many of them went to analysis. But in general they didn't want thelr fantasies turned back into ‘complexes and the complexes reduced into problems to be solved Rather, they wented their complexes to produce more fantasies; people ‘who deal in the Imagination don't want their imaginal-realm explained in terms of psyehopathology, in terms of'sick complexes’, which then become probleme to be resolved, Is it posstble to do this kind of work not as a problem solver? That's ‘whet [ mean by ‘towards an imaginal ego’. Would it be possible to move ‘ towards another kind of ego and realise another kind of approsch where the complex is encouraged to spin out its fantasies and where therapy becomes an exezciee of fantasy and where problems themselves are simply part of the fontasy. Then one goes into the imaginal world, not for the sake ff a problem, not for the sake of the control apparatus and the restoration of it, but for the ake of the tmaginal world itself, in order simply to explore ft, tobe at home in it, develop an imaginal ego that can live init. In this ‘sense the azt therapist (who is supposed to be at the bottom of the ladder of the heirarchical system in the mental health world) would take a much more important position. He would he involved in doing the main tesk which ts not interpreting, not turning the material into the practical reason, wot trying to strengthen the ego, But he would be encouraging, seducing, conduclng this, fantasy process to go oa further. What's true for the individual may be true equally for the complex, Quite possibly the complex too could be forming mother ego. We tend to think that there is only one ego, but we all know there are lots of egos; we are each ‘many people, We play many roles and many games. And there are many kkinds of people in our dreams, 1am led into this because there is probably some other kind of ego now happening in ourselves, although we tend to project ‘this thing that's happening in ourselves onto the drug scene, the youth scene, this scene or that scene, but it's happening in everybody. The old ego is Copping out; it doesn't want ta do ite thing sitymore. And if it hasn't copped fout with its will, it has dropped out, as it can’t cope. So it's quite possible that the ego is in transformation which we call a ‘weakening’ and that through this weakening another kind of ego is coming Into being. This imaginal ego, as shall call it, seems quive comfortable living with what used to be called ‘irreal." can't see that i's weak, in that some people can live in situations now that 40 years ago they would have had to go to an asylum about. And yet people can live in this situation and are qulte at home in a realm of extraordinary images. extraordinary seasations and so on. The rational volisonsl ego can’t make that scene. This ego {s not conceived through its deeds. [tis aot marked by the muscle notion of ego strength and itis aot pragmatic. It is fantastic ‘And 50 we come back to the immense prejudice we have (n our language against fantasy. Fantasy (¢ ‘only’ fantasy, fantasy isn't ‘real’, whereas problems are real, Problems are ‘tough’, probleme axe ‘hard’, problems are "importantSuch are the words we use for the fantasy we Have called ‘problems’. And fantasy? ‘That is only ephemeral, a whim, for children; it's silly, and so on. When you sie in on a school meeting about children or a hospital meetiag about patients, jou hear, "we've got to do something about this problem.” Immediately we are to fhe old ego, We are still used to che vision that Freud gave of the extension of the ego atthe expense of the affective imagination, the id. And we think of the egoisation of the psyche as a kind of Pax Romana, the gradual extension of civili= sation over more and more of the barbarous areas as central ego development goes | on and the complexes are brought under the dominion of ‘the normal control apteestut, Decoming servieable to the ego, But could we not conceive less of civiising and more of a culture of the complexes ‘Then our main concern would be the archetypal background, the fantasy of the complex, the way (t speaks naturally. Not interpreted into the official language of Rome, the ego. We would then look at fantasies for thelr historleal perpective, thelr representations in art and sensuality. We would observe the etye of complex, and the drama that the complex plays us into. ‘The complexes coud have othes Finis ot heroes then, not necessarily the heroes of battle. Other kinds of cultural heroce ‘Then decay and leisure would belong to the eulture of the complex, Just aa mel ag ‘Browth (that crazy word we keep using which is only suitable as an aim for ehldven or vegetables). Decay belongs to the complex's culture; leisure belongs to its culture ‘The inertia, pathology. and depression that the complex takes us into, eves if bother, some and noisome to the civilisation of the psyche, may produce something for the culture of the peyehe: y In short, the complexes may be seen as bearers of culture, as ancestral messengers. ‘nd inorder to hear the alter egos, the other egos ia the complexes, the litle people, we would frst have to weaken the central structure of the old ego aad its notion of the Pax Romana, ‘This possibility is not so remote. We witness (t mainly in recurrent fantasies that our {ime compares to the end of the Roman civilisation. The psychological process which {is actually going on lnside of us = the weakening of the central authority le projected into history and we are supposed to be going thraugh what went on in Rome in the Period between 300 and 400: the invasion of the barbarians. The central authority is being invaded by the many other voices, the other complexes which have other thease to say, resulting in 2 weakening of the old ego. Finally { want to urn tothe notion of insight. In general, theraplete, regardless of their school, tend to think insight is critical for psychological health, development gr Improvement. Insight is eritical. What insight is, Teoulda't tell you. Dat we do now that we eaa’t make insight, Insights happen independent of will end reason ‘They seem to happen out of the imaginal realm when depression goes on long eucugh, When depression {splayed with Tong enough. Sometimes insigit occurs and ta egy forms from these insights. Thus the hospital experience le #0 often cruelal for Dullding the new imaginal ego, To conclude: the arts pechaps which best encourage this kind of insight, the insight of the imagination, speaking its own unprofessional language. The process ther weit inde alture. hher- ers. ‘ple, the fhieb xeted ris ngs a ‘gh, have just described of the spontaneous appearance of insight ie how Imaginative ideas come into being and how art comes to one, ditectiy tunwilled, trrational. (This doesn't mean that you must kill the will: 1m not trying to separate to such an extent that there shall be no will and no reason, [have come down heavily for one side, the imaginal side, because it has 2,500 years against it.) I believe that this audience ‘would understand better than any other kind of audience, how spontan- ceously insight develops out of the imaginal work. When psychology wishes to reflect directly the insight of the imaginal realm - this neglected third part of the peyche or the unconecfoue as it came to be called ~ i will have to start making images and metaphors and clap its hands and sing and dance, tell tales, and write another kind of history of a case. Case histories after all are extraordinary fantasies. Case histories have been accumulated in hospitals all over the world. They are a species of fiction that was developed im the last 40 years and there aze massed tons of it. ‘These histories or social-workers’ write-ups speak in the fantasy language of problems without realizing that they are fiction. Why do we not realise a case history is a story, and that we speak of life in the language of their fiction and create what Jung hae called a "healing ction’, an imaginal context for that life we are describing, whereby thar life may imagine itself in another way. Why must the patient be the only one to paint himself a new existence? Cannot the therapist imaginat- ively write him into a new history? [As psychology maves heyond itself towards a psychology which is not. ‘a translation of psychic events into a professlonal language, but 4 payehology that speaks dizectly of psychic events, a paycnalegy of insight and evocation, aot interpretation and explanation, it could thea speak directly inthe soul language of imaginal speech. ‘Then psychology would begin to sound like the language of imagination, and perhaps, 1 hope, take moze end more the forms of axt and ite play. Copyright 1970. james Hillman. ‘+ Dr. Hillman gave this talk at a meeting organised by BAAT on the 2éth Novernber 1969,