Lost Knowledge of the Imagination: Gary Lachman and the Imaginal World

There are certain ideas that seem to sit just beneath the surface of modern life, recognised in fragments, but rarely given their full significance. Imagination is one of them.

In Lost Knowledge of the Imagination, Gary Lachman explores how imagination has been misunderstood, marginalised, and often reduced to something trivial or unreal within Western culture. What emerges instead is a very different picture. One in which imagination is not a secondary function of the mind, but a primary way of knowing.

If you are interested in exploring true imagination in your own life or creative work, you are welcome to contact me.

Imagination as a Way of Knowing

"..it is the source and medium of our other way of knowing. It shows us aspects and dimensions of reality that we would miss without it .... While it can be used for fantasy, illusion, make-believe, and escapism, the real work of imagination is to make contact with the strange world in which we live and to serve as both guide and inspiration for our development within it. It is the way we evolve. Imagination presents us with possible, potential realities that it is our job to actualise. It also presents us with a world that would not be complete without our help."

This challenges a deeply ingrained assumption, that imagination is somehow less real than rational thought. That it belongs to childhood, creativity, or escapism, rather than to serious engagement with the world. Lachman suggests something far more radical. That imagination allows us to encounter aspects of reality that cannot be reached through logic alone.

The Imaginal World

"..Corbin and Jung and others contend that for them — and potentially for all of us — the 'Imaginal' constitutes an entire world of its own...just as objective as the sensory world, with its own geography, history, laws, and, as Jung discovered, its own inhabitants."

Here we move into territory that can feel unfamiliar, even uncomfortable.

The idea of the imaginal is not the same as imagination understood as fantasy. It refers to a domain of experience that is neither purely subjective nor simply “made up”, but has its own kind of reality.

Thinkers such as Carl Jung and Henry Corbin approached this as a genuine dimension of human experience, one that reveals itself through images, dreams, symbols, and creative expression. This is something we enter into relationship with, rather than invent at will.

The Loss of Imagination in Modern Culture

Lachman’s book traces how this way of understanding imagination has gradually been lost.

In many contemporary contexts, imagination is treated as either:

• a distraction

• a form of entertainment

• or something to be controlled and directed toward practical outcomes

What is largely absent is the sense that imagination might have its own integrity. That it might speak in ways that are not immediately reducible to usefulness or explanation.

This loss is not just intellectual. It has consequences for how we experience meaning, creativity, and our place in the world.

Imagination in Art, Psychotherapy, and Mentoring

In all the branches of my work, art, depth psychotherapy, and mentoring, imagination is of central importance.

In psychotherapy, imagination often appears through images, dreams, and symbolic expressions that carry meaning beyond what can be easily articulated. Rather than interpreting these in a fixed way, the task is to stay with them, and to allow their significance to unfold.

If you are curious about how this relates more broadly to therapeutic work, you can read more about [depth psychotherapy] and the role of imagination within it. In mentoring and creative practice, imagination can act as a guide. Not by providing ready-made answers, but by opening possibilities that feel both unfamiliar and deeply personal.

To take imagination seriously is to take seriously the idea that something is trying to come into being through you.

A Different Relationship to Reality

Lachman’s work invites a shift in perspective, from seeing imagination as something unreal, to recognising it as something that participates in reality in its own way.

This does not mean abandoning reason or critical thinking, but allowing for the possibility that there are forms of knowing that operate alongside them. For those drawn to depth psychology, creativity, or spiritual inquiry, this recognition can be significant. It suggests that imagination is not something we simply use, but something we are in relationship with.

The “lost knowledge” of imagination may not be entirely lost. But it does require attention, patience, and a willingness to engage with what is not immediately clear.

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Andrew Phillips is a Visual Artist, Psychotherapist, and Creative Mentor.

Thank you for reading this article. If something here resonates with your own experience, you are very welcome to get in touch with any questions or to arrange an initial consultation.

Find out more about psychotherapy sessions online in the UK, and how we might begin working together. I am an HCPC registered Art Psychotherapist, offering an approach informed by depth psychology.

I also offer online mentoring for artists and creative professionals (UK & internationally). Conversations to enrich your vision for art and life, and to explore questions of direction and purpose.

You can view and purchase original artworks via the website shop. My painting and mixed-media work explores landscape and the Numinous.