Abstract
Active imagination is a key technique of Jungian analysis. Despite its centrality, and its potential importance beyond Jungian psychology to the area of systems neuroscience, psychology, and consciousness studies, there are no known neurological mechanisms underlying this psychological phenomenon. There is a history of using the types of mental imagery used in active imagination to explore consciousness. The development and use of active imagination is briefly reviewed, and a case is developed that the neurology underlying active imagination would be fruitfully explored by considering it a special case of mystical experience. Active imagination primarily uses the right hemisphere processing of symbol and metaphor, just as mystical experiences do. A hypothesis is presented that active imagination is a left hemisphere, conscious function, communicating with unconscious functions located in the right hemisphere.
Keywords: active imagination, neuroscience, Carl Gustav Jung, mystical experience, neural mechanism, brain hemispheres, split brain
Recommended Citation
Fox, C. R. (2026). Neural Mechanisms Underlying Jung’s Active Imagination: A Review and Hypothesis. Journal of Conscious Evolution, 22(1). https://digitalcommons.ciis.edu/cejournal/vol22/iss1/8
Included in
Cognitive Neuroscience Commons, Other Neuroscience and Neurobiology Commons, Other Psychology Commons, Systems Neuroscience Commons, Theory and Philosophy Commons, Transpersonal Psychology Commons
