ABSTRACT

This chapter reviews the history of the diverse approaches to studying imagination, as it has been used in philosophy, social science, psychology and cultural psychology. It provides a more focused review of the related concepts creativity, dreams, daydreaming, play, counterfactual reasoning, decision making, thought experiments and innovation. Gendler emphasizes the heterogeneity of the research field, reviewing a list of definitions and examining various taxonomies of imagination that have been proposed in an attempt to bring order to the field. Danziger examines the history of the basic dichotomies that characterize the study of imagination. Freud identifies four basic imaginative processes such as condensation, displacement, figuration and synthesis that transforms the latent contents into the dream. Daydreaming is related to dreaming, but it occurs while people are awake and thus it entails more awareness. Winnicott distinguishes several zones of experiences and identifies the area of transitional phenomena as that of playing, imagining and science.