Jungian Imaginative Movement Therapy (I.M.T).
In the Transcendent Function, Jung (1916/1960) observed: we find cases where there is no tangible mood or depression at all, but just a general dull discontent, a feeling of resistance to everything, a sort of boredom .... In these cases no definite starting point exists – it would first have to be created. (p. 83 [CW8, para. 169])I.M.T. stands for Imaginative Movement Therapy. This Jungian therapeutic method offers a facilitative – relational approach to Jung’s active imagination (A.I.), emphasizing predominantly the visual sensory modality. The imaginative experience is called a waking dream.
I.M.T. is a hybridised-integrative therapeutic modality fordeveloped from Jung’s Active Imagination and Robert Desoille’s Directed Waking Dream/rêve éveillé dirigé (R.E.D.). This method of imaginative psychotherapy for adults, has been developed by Dr. Laner Cassar Ph.D in 2014. In I.M.T, the less-known French (R.E.D) method serves as the other, as well as the shadow of the active imagination technique. Desoille’s directed waking dream serves as an initial stimulus for active imagination itself so as to enable it to engage in a self-reflexive process. Qualities such as therapist’s guidance vs. auto-guidance, directiveness vs. spontaneity, movement of image vs. staying long with one image, relaxation and body grounding vs. absence of relaxation, brief vs. long-term work and by-passing vs. working through resistance, challenge us to look at active imagination differently. I.M.T. allows active imagination to reclaim and integrate certain disowned and split-off aspects.
Desoille had used Jungian concepts in his theory such as the collective unconscious but Jungians hardly took any aspect of his therapy, hence the development of I.M.T. Between Jung’s A.I. and Desoille’s R.E.D. there is a tension between their respective use of undirected and directed imagination. RED is less directive than it seems at face value, while there is an element of directivity in active imagination even though it comes across as a non-directive technique.
A waking dream is a guided exploration of one’s inner reality through imagination, with the purpose of giving patients the opportunity to journey willfully and sensorially through a world that embodies their belief systems, which are discovered in the form of images. Imagination can be viewed as providing a symbolic bridge between our conscious and unconscious thoughts. It is not the usual guided imagery we use to relax, or the creative visualisation or mental rehearsal, or role-plays we engage in, to win a match or pass an interview....In I.M.T the imagery is metaphorical.
The waking dreams in I.M.T. offer an introverted facilitated ‘pilgrimage’. Instead of aiming at a spiritual transformation it aims for an emotional metamorphosis of the inner wandering ‘pilgrim’. It helps the patient through his or her impasse, towards a personal evolution and transformation, since the aim of the therapy is not primarily an exploration of the past. I.M.T provides a more immediate and involving personal experience of unconscious processes. Furthermore, it helps to develop a capacity to imagine, to have a symbolic attitude, and is easier than active imagination because of its more or less established setting and relative guidance by the therapist.
The word “movement” in the title, besides referring to both the explorative movement and resting of the imaginal-body ego in the imaginative landscape, refers to the fact that when we visualise or imagine, we also stimulate the neuromuscular circuitry, thus engaging a body response even when lying down.
In I.M.T. we give an initial short verbal stimulus or better an enargeic stimulus to the patient lying on a couch /armchair and the patient would let his or her imagination work on the stimulus and create an inner oneiric drama. Thus, the patient pauses from his/her real life and enters an atemporal mythical one, echoing Coleridge’s most famous phrase of a “willing suspension of disbelief” (Coleridge, 1817/1907, p. 6).
The enargeic stimulus helps free the patient’s imaginative experience leading to a ‘drame interieur’, involving an unfolding of what urgently seeks expression. The stimulus is a powerful and direct route into the imaginal and the way can lead to all possible scenarios. Through the patient’s imaginal-body ego, he or she can walk, swim,climb, even fly and everything is possible.
Sensation of the stimulus changes to perception, accessing archaic memory, fantasies, repressed desires, and firing a creative transformative imagination. Moreover, since the patient is asked to voice out loud his or her inner visualisation to the therapist, the method forms an internal performative expression as well as an external performative narrative, an ekphrasis. This gives the therapist the possibility to participate in the patient’s waking dream. The spoken out waking dream gives the therapist the possibility to participate in the patient’s waking dream and to be moved by the narrative.
It also allows the therapist to intervene and help the patient if faced with difficult moments throughout his or her perilous imaginative journey.
In another phase of the therapeutic work, the subject writes a report of his/her waking dream experience which will then be used in a face-to-face session in order to explore the meaning of the scenario.
Ultimately, I.M.T gives us a platform for expression and offers a wide array of tools understand ourselves at greater depth. When used within therapy, it provides us with the chance to consider and reflect upon what could be, what might have been, what was, and what is.