ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses how the published studies fill some of the gaps in the available research on imagination and social perspectives and thus pave the way for future investigations. It emphasizes the resources of the phenomenological method for the inquiry into these issues, as well as the empirical and theoretical impact of the insights stemming from phenomenologically informed psychopathology for a refined understanding of both imaginative and social phenomena—and of their interconnections. The chapter addresses some of the crucial issues discussed in more and less recent approaches to imagination, focusing on the relation between imagination and perception, on the distinction between our experience of what is real and of what is imagined, and on the idea of "freedom" of imagination. It also discusses the various ways in which imagination is connected to social perspectives. The role of imagination in simulation theories has been notably emphasized in relation to the philosophy of psychology and psychopathology.
