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  • Brian Dietrich, Ph.D., LMFT, is a licensed psychotherapist, certified interactive guided imagery practitioner, clinical supervisor, adjunct professor, and author. Dr. Dietrich w... more edit
Dietrich, B. D. (2018). Honoring the ecology between worlds: Depth psychology and relational guided imagery (Order No. 10845748). Available from ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global. (2090026651). Retrieved from... more
Dietrich, B. D. (2018). Honoring the ecology between worlds: Depth psychology and relational guided imagery (Order No. 10845748). Available from ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global. (2090026651). Retrieved from https://search-proquest-com.pgi.idm.oclc.org/docview/2090026651?accountid=45402

This dissertation employs interpretive phenomenological analysis (IPA) to study the lived experience of 6 individuals engaged in relational guided imagery (RGI). Countervailing the Industrial Revolution’s spiritual alienation, and loss of symbolic perspective, a romantic current arose in German Idealism that elevated human imagination to a superordinate, world-making power. In this context, Jung’s analytical psychology compensated the prevailing scientific rationalism of the day. Jung developed a rudimentary method called active imagination to engage the psyche’s spontaneous images and embrace the imagination as a valid means of producing knowledge. Robert Desoille seized upon Jung’s theorizing and developed a highly structured approach to mental imagery based on provider authority and directivity. Desoille’s Directed Waking Dream proliferated throughout Continental Europe and obscured Jung’s groundbreaking imaginal discoveries. To counterweigh these directive, intrusive methods, permissive forms of image work arose that culminated in relational guided imagery (RGI). Traceable to Jung, RGI enhances active imagination, providing it with a procedural structure that situates imaginal exploration in an intersubjective, empathic context. Comparing Jung’s interactions with imaginal wisdom figures and the research participants’ experiences of inner advisors, one significant tonal difference and five common superordinate themes were identified. The atonal distinction may be characterized as confrontation and conflict (i.e., Jung) vs. consonance and calm (i.e., study participants). Shared superordinate themes include (1) Positive Qualities of Advisors, (2) Personal Transformation, (3) Positive Effects of Imagery, (4) Parallel Methods, and (5) Transpersonal/Spiritual/Numinous imagery.

Keywords: active imagination, archetypal psychology, guided imagery, inner advisor, interpretive phenomenological analysis, imagery, images, imagination, Jung, Jungian psychology
This volume presents the bricolage of Philemon, depicted as a superannuated white beard, a prophet, and a sage who links and mediates the relationship between the living (i.e., Jung's ego image) and the dead (i.e., non-ego images).... more
This volume presents the bricolage of Philemon, depicted as a superannuated white beard, a prophet, and a sage who links and mediates the relationship between the living (i.e., Jung's ego image) and the dead (i.e., non-ego images). Philemon is communicative, knowledgeable, and wise. He gave voice to Jung's mythopoetic cosmology, which Jung conceptually elaborated in his Collected Works. In contrast to research participants who pursued imaginal beings to realize transpersonal dimensions of consciousness, Imaginal beings and overwhelming imagery pursued Jung relentlessly. It was as if the objective psyche sought to enlist Jung as a medium to give voice to its radical cultural imperative to restore a symbolic sensibility lost in the shift from a religious to a scientific world view and reinstate humanity's place in the natural order. These seeker/sought dynamics distinguish between participants' experiences of Consonance and Calm vs. Jung's Confrontation and Conflict with the unconscious. Shared superordinate themes include:
Positive Qualities of Advisors.
Personal Transformation.
Positive Effects of Imagery.
Parallel Methods.
Transpersonal/Spiritual/Numinous imagery.
This volume presents Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) research comparing research participants' Inner Guide experiences with Jung's encounters with Philemon, his inner guide. To compare participant experiences with Jung's... more
This volume presents Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) research comparing research participants' Inner Guide experiences with Jung's encounters with Philemon, his inner guide. To compare participant experiences with Jung's imaginal engagements, I reviewed Jung's experiments in confrontation with the unconscious in Memories Dreams, Reflections, and The Red Book (i.e., Liber Novus). Research questions asked (1) "What themes and patterns emerge in student descriptions of their inner guide imagery?" and (2) "how do participant accounts relate to Jung's imaginal engagement with personified archetypes?"
Countervailing the Industrial Revolution’s spiritual alienation and loss of symbolic perspective, a romantic current arose in German Idealism that elevated human imagination to a superordinate, world-making power. In this context, Jung’s... more
Countervailing the Industrial Revolution’s spiritual alienation and loss of symbolic perspective, a romantic current arose in German Idealism that elevated human imagination to a superordinate, world-making power. In this context, Jung’s analytical psychology and his method of active imagination compensated the prevailing scientific rationalism of the day and legitimized that imagery, images, and imagination can produce knowledge. This volume situates Jungian and archetypal psychological views of images and imagination in the context of Western philosophy, and it traces the various ways imagination has been imagined through its polysemous evolution in Western thought.
This volume situates contemporary guided imagery practices within the tradition of Jungian depth psychology; It offers practitioners of guided imagery with 1) an imaginal ontology supporting phenomenological exploration of the inner world... more
This volume situates contemporary guided imagery practices within the tradition of Jungian depth psychology; It offers practitioners of guided imagery with 1) an imaginal ontology supporting phenomenological exploration of the inner world and 2) an empirically based epistemological foundation valorizing Inner Guide techniques, and 3) offers Jungian depth psychology a more clearly articulated structure for accessing, exploring, and integrating imaginal experiences in a relational context.