ABSTRACT
The religious believer speaks of God’s grace, of God seeking for the lost soul; the psychologist sees these beliefs as symbols for the start of a stage in the process of individuation. Psychic development is frequently presented in therapy as an image of a baby being born. Because the primary psychosomatic self, with its full undeveloped potential, the child can always potentially symbolize either the beginning or the goal of the individuation process – both the achievement of one stage and the beginning of the next. Active imagination is a technique that promotes dialogue between the ego and the self. The ego is deliberately set aside temporarily, and images from the unconscious arise and develop. Art therapy and drama therapy are based on the theory of active imagination; images can also be formulated in pottery, or poetry. These receptive media are all able to take the practitioner’s projections from their self.
