Introduction

This chapter introduces the main theme of the work, i.e., a rapprochement between Carl Jung’s active imagination and Robert Desoille’s “rêve éveillé dirigé/directed waking dream” (RED) method. The reasons for such a rapprochement are two-fold. First, it aims to study the historical development of these two approaches in Central Europe in the first half of the twentieth century. Second, it aims to explore their theoretical similarities and differences and proposes implications for an integrated framework of clinical practice. This introduction underlines how the whole work strives to enrich C.G. Jung’s analytical psychology with Desoille’s psychotherapeutic method of rêve éveillé dirigé and the imaginative psychotherapeutic methods of post-Desoillian thinkers.