| 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.—Do all representations contain motor elements?—Unusual effects produced by images: vesication, stigmata; their conditions; their meaning for our subject.—The imagination 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 the imagination 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 in series. Its principal causes: internal or subjective, external or objective.—Association: its rÔle reduced to a single question, the formation of new combinations.—The principal intellectual factor is thinking by analogy. Why it is an almost inexhaustible source of creation. Its mechanism. Its processes reducible to two, viz.: personification, transformation. | 15 |
CHAPTER II.
the emotional factor. |
| The great importance of this element.—All forms of the creative 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 extraordinary forms.—Association by contrast.—The motor element in tendencies.—There is no creative instinct; invention has not a source, but sources, and always arises from a need.—The work of the imagination reduced to two great classes, themselves reducible to special needs.—Reasons for the prejudice in favor of a creative instinct. | 31 |
CHAPTER III.
the unconscious factor. |
| Various views of the "inspired state." Its essential characteristics; suddenness, impersonality.—Its relations to unconscious activity.—Resemblances to hypermnesia, the initial state of alcoholic intoxication and somnambulism on waking.—Disagreements concerning the ultimate nature of unconsciousness: two hypotheses.—The "inspired state" is not a cause, but an index.—Associations in unconscious form.—Mediate or latent association: recent experiments and discussions on this subject.—"Constellation" the result of a summation of predominant tendencies. Its mechanism. | 50 |
CHAPTER IV.
the organic conditions of the imagination. |
| Anatomical conditions: various hypotheses. Obscurity of the question. Flechsig's theory.—Physiological conditions: are they cause, effect, or accompaniment? Chief factor: change in cerebral and local circulation.—Attempts at experimentation.—The oddities of inventors brought under two heads: the explicable and inexplicable. They are helpers of inspiration.—Is there any analogy between physical and psychic creation? A philosophical hypothesis on the subject.—Limitation of the question. Impossibility of an exact answer. | 65 |
CHAPTER V.
the principle of unity. |
| Importance of the unifying principle. It is a fixed idea or a fixed emotion.—Their equivalence.—Distinction between the synthetic principle and the ideal, which is the principle of unity in motion: the ideal is a construction in images, merely outlined.—The principal forms of the unifying principles: unstable, organic or middle, extreme or semi-morbid.—Obsession of the inventor and the sick: insufficiency of a purely psychological criterion. | 79 |
SECOND PART.
the development of the imagination. |
CHAPTER I.
imagination in animals. |
| Difficulties of the subject.—The degree of imagination in animals.—Does creative synthesis exist in them? Affirmation and denials.—The special form of animal imagination is motor, and shows itself through play: its numerous varieties.—Why the animal imagination must be above all motor: lack of intellectual development.—Comparison with young children, in whom the motor system predominates: the rÔles of movements in infantile insanity. | 93 |
CHAPTER II.
imagination in the child. |
| Division of its development into four principal periods.—Transition from passive to creative imagination: perception and illusion.—Animating everything: analysis of the elements constituting this moment: the rÔle of belief.—Creation in play: period of imitation, attempts at 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-physical objectification of man in the phenomena that he perceives. The rÔle of imagination.—How myths are formed. The moment of creation: two operations—animating everything, qualifying everything. Romantic invention 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 radical transformation: the work of depersonification of the myth. Survivals.—The non-explanatory myths suffer a partial transformation: Literature is a fallen and rationalized mythology.—Popular imagination and legends: the legend is to the myth what illusion is to hallucination.—Unconscious processes that the imagination employs in order to create legends: fusion, idealization. | 118 |
CHAPTER IV.
the higher forms of invention. |
| Is a psychology of great inventors possible? Pathological and physiological theories of genius.—General characters of great inventors. Precocity: chronological order of the development of the creative power. Psychological reasons for this order. Why the creator commences by imitating.—Necessity or fatalism of vocation.—The representative character
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