Bridging Imaginal Pathways: The Jungian Technique of Active Imagination and Robert Desoille’s ‘Rêve éveillé dirigé’ Method

This theoretical study brings together Carl Jung’s active imagination and Robert Desoille’s “rêve éveillé dirigé/directed waking dream” method (RED). Such a rapprochement is two-fold. Firstly, it aims to study the historical development of these two approaches in Central Europe in the first half of the twentieth century. Secondly, it aims to explore their theoretical similarities and differences and proposes implications for a hybridised and integrated framework of clinical practice. The first part of the study contextualizes Jung’s active imagination and RED in the broader psychotherapeutic currents practised at the time. Furthermore, this work analyses them through the geo-historical background of twentieth century France and Switzerland. It also goes on to investigate key historical intersecting points where Jung and Desoille, as well as their disciples, crossed paths. The second part of this study is a theoretical comparison between C. G. Jung’s active imagination technique and Robert Desoille’s directed waking dream method (RED). This work compares the spatial metaphors of interiority used by both Jung and Desoille to describe the traditional concept of inner psychic space in the waking dreams of Jung’s active imagination and Desoille’s RED. This study also attempts a broader theoretical comparison between the procedural aspects of both RED and active imagination by identifying commonalities and divergences between the two approaches. The comparison is built on a comparative methodology based on five operatively important categories chosen from the literature review. These are related to the therapeutic practice and procedures of both waking dreams and include: setting and preparation of the body, structure and directivity by the analyst/therapist, transferential and counter-transferential relationship, narratives, and interpretation. Such a comparison also helps to explore the implications for an integrated- hybridised framework of clinical practice i.e., a RED-based approach to active imagination that fills an important gap in post-Jungian writings on active visual imagination as well as offering a long-awaited acknowledgement of the RED method.