The Debt We Owe To The

From Psychological Types (Collected Works, Vol. 6), Para. 93, first published in 1921. The book runs to over 600 pages and includes an extensive chapter on the role of fantasy and imagination in psychological life. Jung is arguing that the capacity for imaginative play — what he also called "active imagination" — is not a frivolous luxury but the engine through which the unconscious communicates with the conscious mind. Without imagination, the psyche has no way to process, symbolise, or transform its deeper contents. The claim is framed as an economic one: the "debt" is incalculable because virtually all creative, psychological, and cultural achievement depends on it.