ABSTRACT
Imagination is the power to make appear representations, whether with or without an external incitement. 'Impressions' are a philosophical or psychological artefact. Now philosophy starts when we begin trying to break the closure of this life-world in both its biological and social-historical dimensions. True, the Third Critique sketches another view, but only 'reflectively' and only as part of a heavy teleological metaphysics. Defunctionalization makes possible, first, the detachment of the representation from the object of the biological 'need', therefore the cathexis of biologically irrelevant objects. Then the possibility for the activities of the psyche to become objects for themselves, and the labile quid pro quo, which is the prerequisite of symbolism. Socialization is the process whereby the psyche is forced to abandon its pristine solipsistic meaning for the shared meanings provided by society. To elucidate the idea of the instituting social imaginary it can again follow the two paths: the philosophical and the psychoanalytical.
