While the main requirement for the enhancement of imaginative life is to simply spend time with images – watching sunsets, visiting art galleries and reading novels – it is also beneficial to include some critical reading. This is because reflection upon key questions – What exactly is imagination? How can we imagine more fully? And why would we want to? – is not just a theoretical but also a practical matter. To ignore these questions allows common assumptions (of an illusory, made-up and subjective fantasy) to limit or tame imagining, whereas to explore them opens up the conceptual space needed to more fully notice, validate and enhance the wild spontaneity, richness and complexity of imaginative experience.
The following list is offered as optional further reading to participants of my on-line ‘Waking Dreams’ course as well as a good starting point for anyone wanting to deepen understanding of this area. It is my choice of influential and useful texts across a range of perspectives, from transpersonal and Jungian psychology, ecotherapy, anthropology, complexity theory and fractal geometry.
Abram, David (2021). Alliance for Wild Ethics.
Bosnak, Robert. Embodiment: Creative Imagination in Medicine, Art and Travel. Routledge, 2007
Boulton, Jean G. Embracing Complexity: Strategic Perspectives for an Age of Turbulence. Oxford University Press, 2015.
Brody, Hugh. The Other Side of Eden. North Point Press, 2000.
Buhner, Stephen Harrod. Plant Intelligence and the Imaginal Realm. Inner Traditions, 2014.
Ferrer, Jorge N. Revisioning Transpersonal Theory: A Participatory Vision of Human Spirituality. State University of New York Press, 2001.
Frater, Allan. Waking Dreams: Imagination in Psychotherapy and Everyday Life. Transpersonal Press, 2021.
Levine, Stephen K. Poiesis: The Language of Psychology and the Speech of the Soul. Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 2001.
Lockhart, Russell. Psyche Speaks: A Jungian Approach to Self and World. The Lockhart Press, 2014.
Marks-Tarlow, Terry. Psyche’s Veil: Psychotherapy, Fractals and Complexity. Routledge, 2008.
Stern, Daniel N. The Present Moment in Psychotherapy and Everyday Life. Norton & Company, 2014.
Totton, Nick. Wild Therapy: Rewilding our inner and outer worlds. PCCS Books, 2021
Watkins, Mary. Waking Dreams. Spring Publications, 2003.