Towards the Scientific Study of Imagination

Abstract

Imagination was chiefly explored by armchair, self-reflective procedures of Enlightenment philosophers such as Hobbes and Leibniz or the Romantic poets such as Wordsworth and Coleridge and by the literary genre of the stream of consciousness. Although William James put it at the center of psychology it was Freud's development of the psychoanalytic method that opened the way for a more systematic consideration of ongoing thought and waking fantasy processes. After a hiatus during the period of behaviorist domination, the exploration of the functions and dimensions of imaginative thought through increasingly precise psychometric and laboratory procedures has again become a major task for psychology. Specific research questions relating to imagery and styles of imagination as well as clinical applications of imaginative thought are reviewed.