ANALYTICAL TABLE OF CONTENTS.
| page | |
| Translator's Preface | [v] |
| Author's Preface | [vii] |
| INTRODUCTION. the motor nature of the constructive imagination. | |
| Transition from the reproductive to the creative imagination.—Doall representations contain motor elements?—Unusual effects produced by images: vesication,stigmata; their conditions; their meaning for our subject.—Theimagination is, on the intellectual side,equivalent to will. Proof: Identity of development;subjective, personal character of both; teleologic character;analogy between the abortive forms of theimagination and abulias. | [3] |
| FIRST PART. analysis of the imagination. | |
| CHAPTER I. the intellectual factor. | |
| Dissociation, preparatory work.—Dissociation in complete,incomplete and schematic images.—Dissociation inseries. Its principal causes: internal or subjective,external or objective.—Association: its rôle reducedto a single question, the formation of new combinations.—Theprincipal intellectual factor is thinking byanalogy. Why it is an almost inexhaustible source ofcreation. Its mechanism. Its processes reducible totwo, viz.: personification, transformation. | [15] |
| CHAPTER II. the emotional factor. | |
| The great importance of this element.—All forms of thecreative imagination imply affective elements. Proofs:All affective conditions may influence the imagination.Proofs: Association of ideas on an emotional basis;new combinations under ordinary and extraordinaryforms.—Association by contrast.—The motor elementin tendencies.—There is no creative instinct; inventionhas not a source, but sources, and always arisesfrom a need.—The work of the imagination reducedto two great classes, themselves reducible to specialneeds.—Reasons for the prejudice in favor of a creativeinstinct. | [31] |
| CHAPTER III. the unconscious factor. | |
| Various views of the "inspired state." Its essential characteristics;suddenness, impersonality.—Its relationsto unconscious activity.—Resemblances to hypermnesia,the initial state of alcoholic intoxication andsomnambulism on waking.—Disagreements concerningthe ultimate nature of unconsciousness: two hypotheses.—The"inspired state" is not a cause, but anindex.—Associations in unconscious form.—Mediate orlatent association: recent experiments and discussionson this subject.—"Constellation" the result of asummation of predominant tendencies. Its mechanism. | [50] |
| CHAPTER IV. the organic conditions of the imagination. | |
| Anatomical conditions: various hypotheses. Obscurity ofthe question. Flechsig's theory.—Physiological conditions:are they cause, effect, or accompaniment?Chief factor: change in cerebral and local circulation.—Attemptsat experimentation.—The oddities of inventorsbrought under two heads: the explicable andinexplicable. They are helpers of inspiration.—Isthere any analogy between physical and psychic creation?A philosophical hypothesis on the subject.—Limitationof the question. Impossibility of an exactanswer. | [65] |
| CHAPTER V. the principle of unity. | |
| Importance of the unifying principle. It is a fixed ideaor a fixed emotion.—Their equivalence.—Distinctionbetween the synthetic principle and the ideal, whichis the principle of unity in motion: the ideal is a constructionin images, merely outlined.—The principalforms of the unifying principles: unstable, organic ormiddle, extreme or semi-morbid.—Obsession of the inventorand the sick: insufficiency of a purely psychologicalcriterion. | [79] |
| SECOND PART. the development of the imagination. | |
| CHAPTER I. imagination in animals. | |
| Difficulties of the subject.—The degree of imagination inanimals.—Does creative synthesis exist in them?Affirmation and denials.—The special form of animalimagination is motor, and shows itself through play:its numerous varieties.—Why the animal imaginationmust be above all motor: lack of intellectual development.—Comparisonwith young children, in whom themotor system predominates: the rôles of movements ininfantile insanity. | [93] |
| CHAPTER II. imagination in the child. | |
| Division of its development into four principal periods.—Transitionfrom passive to creative imagination: perceptionand illusion.—Animating everything: analysisof the elements constituting this moment: the rôle ofbelief.—Creation in play: period of imitation, attemptsat invention.—Fanciful invention. | [103] |
| CHAPTER III. primitive man and the creation of myths. | |
| The golden age of the creative imagination.—Myths:hypotheses as to the origin: the myth is the psycho-physicalobjectification of man in the phenomena thathe perceives. The rôle of imagination.—How mythsare formed. The moment of creation: two operations—animatingeverything, qualifying everything. Romanticinvention lacking in peoples without imagination.The rôle of analogy and of association through"constellation."—The evolution of myths: ascension,acme, decline.—The explanatory myths undergo a radicaltransformation: the work of depersonification ofthe myth. Survivals.—The non-explanatory mythssuffer a partial transformation: Literature is a fallenand rationalized mythology.—Popular imaginationand legends: the legend is to the myth what illusionis to hallucination.—Unconscious processes that theimagination employs in order to create legends:fusion, idealization. | [118] |
| CHAPTER IV. the higher forms of invention. | |
| Is a psychology of great inventors possible? Pathologicaland physiological theories of genius.—General charactersof great inventors. Precocity: chronological orderof the development of the creative power. Psychologicalreasons for this order. Why the creator commencesby imitating.—Necessity or fatalism of vocation.—Therepresentative character of great creators.Discussion as to the origin of this character—is it inthe individual or in the environment?—Mechanism ofcreation. Two principal processes—complete, abridged.Their three phases; their resemblances and differences.—Therôle of chance in invention: it supposes themeeting of two factors—one internal, the other external.—Chanceis an occasion for, not an agent of,creation. | [140] |
| CHAPTER V. law of the development of the imagination. | |
| Is the creative imagination, in its evolution, subject toany law?—It passes through two stages separated bya critical phase.—Period of autonomy; critical period;period of definite constitution. Two cases: decay ortransformation through logical form, through deviation.—Subsidiarylaw of increasing complexity.—Historicalverification. | [167] |
| THIRD PART. the principal types of imagination. preliminary. | |
| The need of a concrete study.—The varieties of the creativeimagination, analogous to the varieties of character. | [179] |
| CHAPTER I. the plastic imagination. | |
| It makes use of clear images, well determined in space,and of associations of objective relations.—Its externalcharacter.—Inferiority of the affective element.—Itsprincipal manifestations: in the arts dealingwith form; in poetry (transformation of sonorous intovisual images); in myths with clear outline; in mechanicalinvention.—The dry and rational imaginationits elements. | [184] |
| CHAPTER II. the diffluent imagination. | |
| It makes use of vague images linked according to theleast rigorous modes of association. Emotional abstractions;their nature.—Its characteristic of inwardness.—Itsprincipal manifestations: revery, the romanticspirit, the chimerical spirit; myths and religiousconceptions, literature and the fine arts (thesymbolists), the class of the marvelous and fantastic.—Varietiesof the diffluent imagination: first, numericalimagination; its nature; two principal forms,cosmogonic and scientific conceptions; second, musicalimagination, the type of the affective imagination.Its characteristics; it does not develop save after aninterval of time.—Natural transposition of events inmusicians.—Antagonism between true musical imaginationand plastic imagination. Inquiry and factson the subject.—Two great types of imagination. | [195] |
| CHAPTER III. mystic imagination. | |
| Its elements; its special characteristics.—Thinking symbolically.—Natureof this symbolism.—The mysticchanges concrete images into symbolic images.—Theirobscurity; whence it arises.—Extraordinary abuse ofanalogy.—Mystic labor on letters, numbers, etc.—Natureand extent of the belief accompanying thisform of imagination: it is unconditional and permanent.—Themystic conception of the world a generalsymbolism.—Mystic imagination in religion and inmetaphysics. | [221] |
| CHAPTER IV. the scientific imagination. | |
| It is distinguishable into genera and species.—The needfor monographs that have not yet appeared.—Theimagination in growing sciences—belief is at itsmaximum; in the organized sciences—the negativerôle of method.—The conjectural phase; proof of itsimportance.—Abortive and dethroned hypotheses.—Theimagination in the processes of verification.—Themetaphysician's imagination arises from the sameneed as the scientist's.—Metaphysics is a rationalizedmyth.—Three moments.—Imaginative and rationalist. | [236] |
| CHAPTER V. the practical and mechanical imagination. | |
| Indetermination of this imaginative form.—Inferiorforms: the industrious, the unstable, the eccentric.Why people of lively imagination are changeable.—Superstitiousbeliefs. Origin of this form of imagination—itsmental mechanism and its elements.—Thehigher form—mechanical imagination.—Man has expendedat least as much imagination there as inesthetic creation.—Why the contrary view prevails.—Resemblancesbetween these two forms of imagination.—Identityof development. Detail observation—fourphases.—General characters. This form, at itsbest, supposes inspiration; periods of preparation,of maturity, and of decline.—Special characters:invention occurs in layers. Principal steps of itsdevelopment.—It depends strictly on physical conditions.—Aphase of pure imagination—mechanicalromances. Examples.—Identical nature of the imaginationof the mechanic and that of the artist. | [256] |
| CHAPTER VI. the commercial imagination. | |
| Its internal and external conditions.—Two classes ofcreators—the cautious, the daring.—The initial momentof invention.—The importance of the intuitivemind.—Hypotheses in regard to its psychologicnature.—Its development: the creation of increasinglymore simple processes of substitution.—Characters incommon with the forms of creation already studied.—Characterspeculiar to it—the combining imaginationof the tactician; it is a form of war.—Creativeintoxication.—Exclusive use of schematic representations.—Remarkson the various types of images.—Thecreators of great financial systems.—Brief remarkson the military imagination. | [281] |
| CHAPTER VII. the utopian imagination. | |
| Successive appearances of ideal conceptions.—Creators inethics and in the social realm.—Chimerical forms.Social novelists.—Ch. Fourrier, type of the greatimaginer.—Practical invention—the collective ideal.—Imaginativeregression. | [299] |
| CONCLUSION. | |
| I. The foundations of the creative imagination. | |
| Why man is able to create: two principal conditions.—"Creativespontaneity," which resolves itself intoneeds, tendencies, desires.—Every imaginative creationhas a motor origin.—The spontaneous revival ofimages.—The creative imagination reduced to threeforms: outlined, fixed, objectified. Their peculiarcharacteristics. | [313] |
| II. The imaginative type. | |
| A view of the imaginative life in all its stages.—Reductionto a psychologic law.—Four stages characterized:1, by the quantity of images; 2, by their quantityand intensity; 3, by quantity, intensity and duration;4, by the complete and permanent systematizationof the imaginary life.—Summary. | [320] |
| APPENDICES. observations and documents. | |
| A. The various forms of inspiration. | [335] |
| B. On the nature of the unconscious factor. Two categories—staticunconscious, dynamic unconscious.—Theoriesas to the nature of the unconscious.—Objections,criticisms. | [338] |
| C. Cosmic and human imagination. | [346] |
| D. Evidence in regard to musical imagination. | [350] |
| E. The imaginative type and association of ideas. | [353] |
INTRODUCTION
INTRODUCTION
The Motor Nature of the Constructive Imagination
I
It has been often repeated that one of the principal conquests of contemporary psychology is the fact that it has firmly established the place and importance of movements; that it has especially through observation and experiment shown the representation of a movement to be a movement begun, a movement in the nascent state. Yet those who have most strenuously insisted on this proposition have hardly gone beyond the realm of the passive imagination; they have clung to facts of pure reproduction. My aim is to extend their formula, and to show that it explains, in large measure at least, the origin of the creative imagination.