1st Edition
Imagination in the Western Psyche From Ancient Greece to Modern Neuroscience
Imagination in the Western Psyche: From Ancient Greece to Modern Neuroscience offers a comprehensive treatment of the human imagination by integrating the rich discourse on imagination in the humanities with modern neuroscientific research. This book is the first to offer an integrated understanding of imagination from both a humanistic (i.e., historical, philosophical, cultural, depth psychological) and scientific perspective.
The book presents neurobiological accounts that align with prominent theories in Jungian and archetypal psychology and offers a window into the many ways imagination can be understood. It elaborates on the discourse on imagination in Western civilization that goes back thousands of years. Chapters analyze how imagination has been considered throughout history and contrasts a modern neuroscientific approach that looks at imagination by studying its component parts without addressing the phenomenon in all its experiential richness and complexity. By bringing these two approaches together an account of the human imagination emerges that is grounded in scientific rigor without diminishing the fullness of human experience.
This book will appeal to academics, researchers, and post-graduate students in the fields of analytical psychology, depth psychology, Jungian studies, and psychotherapy
PART1: INTRODUCTION
1: CHASING IMAGINATION
Defining Imagination
Imagination and Depth Psychology
The Great Divide
Model Agnosticism
Overview
2: MEASURING THE IMAGINAL
Scientific Method
Science and Scientism
Perils of Reduction and Promise of Complexity
Phenomenology and Neuroscience
Facing Proteus
PART 2: IMAGINATION AS PHENOMENON
3: A BRIEF HISTORY OF IMAGINATION
FROM PREHISTORY TO THE RENAISSANCE
Phantasies of Ancient Greece
The Platonic Imagination
The Aristotelian Imagination
The Greek Legacy
The Judeo-Christian Imagination: From ¿¿¿¿¿ to Imaginatio
The Renaissance
Precursors to the Renaissance Imagination
Proteus in the Gardens of the World Soul
4: IMAGINATION IN MODERNITY
FROM ENLIGHTENMENT TO DISENCHANTMENT
The Ascendance of Reason
The Synthetic Imagination of Kant
The Creative Imagination of the Romantics
Roots of Romanticism
The Romantic Imagination
Imagination and Reason at the Abyss
The Road to Disenchantment:
Imagination in the 20th Century
From Imagination to The Imaginary
Deconstructing Imagination
Signs of Life
5: IMAGINAL PSYCHOLOGY
The Birth of Depth Psychology:
From Nietzsche to Freud
The Jungian Imagination
From Philosophy to Psychology
Image as Bridge to the Unknown
Archetypes: Collective Primordial Images
Active Imagination
James Hillman: Advocate for the Imaginal
Henry Corbin and the Mundus Imaginalis
The Deliteralization of the Psyche
Imagination of the Soul
A Personified Cosmos
Conclusion
PART 3: THE NEUROSCIENCE OF IMAGINATION
6: SENSE AND IMAGE
Sensation, Perception, Imagination
The Visual System
Multisensory Processing
Is Perception Imagery?
Mental Images
Mental Images and Meaning
The Evolutionary Case for Meaningful Mental Images
Image and Emotion
Imagery, Meaning, and Memory
From Virtual Reality to Anima Mundi
7: TIME AND STORY
The Narrative Dimension
The Evolution of Story
Theory of Mind: Agency in a Storied World
Self-Stories, Individual Development, and Healing
Imagining Memory
The Neurobiology of Memory
Mental Time Travel
Convergence: The Default Mode Network
From Stories Brains to Story Tellers
8: CREATIVITY AND DREAM
Creativity
Creative Production
The Creative Unconscious
Free Association Revisited
Incubation and Insight
Dream
Continuity in Dreaming and Waking Consciousness
Physiological Origins of Dreams
Dreaming and Meaning
Lucidity: The Paradox of Dreaming Awake
Concluding Remarks on the Creative Unconscious
PART 4: THE IMAGINATION OF NEUROSCIENCE
9: IMAGINATION IN SCIENCE
Types of Imagination in Science
Creative Imagination in Scientific Method
The Art of Making Models
The Ontological Imagination
Foregrounding the Imaginal Context
Ontological Creativity
10: NEUROSCIENCE AS STORY AND MYTH
Science and the Bridge of Fiction
Science Fictions in Public Discourse
The Human Face of Neuroscience
Myths of Scientific Purity and Power
Social Considerations in the Production of Scientific Knowledge
Myths and Metaphors of the Brain
Myths and Mysteries of Consciousness
11: CONCLUSION
FACING PROTEUS
Seeking Synthesis
Concluding Remarks in Defense of Science
Sitting with the Shapeshifter
Biography
Jonathan Erickson, a writer and educator, holds a BA in English literature from UC Berkeley and a PhD in depth psychology from Pacifica Graduate Institute, California, USA
