Chapter 6
In: Collective Structures of Imagination in Jungian Interpretation
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Abstract
Bachelard—in his works written between 1928 and 1960, situated on two mutually exclusive fields: science and poetics, reason and imagination—appoints the imagination responsible for the fundamental relationship between the psyche and the cosmos, between the man and the world. Reaching the depth of Me in contact with the elements of the world, the French philosopher is studying fire, water, air, and earth. The concept of elements of nature is related to the mental life of man, similar to the concept of C.G. Jung. The psychological energy of the subject, analyzed through the prism of the four elements, propagates in four different directions. If for Jung the symbolism (after the Hippocrates-Galen) of water was related to the personality type of melancholy, air to spitfire, earth to phlegmatic, and fire to sanguine, for Bachelard the classification of the four fundamental elements leads to the formulation of key points of the imagination concept. The imagined being, called the elementary and basic image, combines the material and dynamic dimension of the imagination. This means that the dreaming entity provides either; matter for dream (fire, water, air, or earth) and puts his consciousness in motion. Elemental analysis