The Imaginary

‘We may therefore conclude that imagination is not an empirical power added to consciousness, but it is the whole of consciousness as it realizes freedom.’

Jean-Paul Sartre

The Imaginary

A phenomenological psychology of the imagination

Jean-Paul Sartre

With introductions by Arlette Eelkaïm-Sartre and Jonathan Webber

London and New York

To Albert Morel

First published in 1940 in French as L’imaginaire
by Éditions Gallimard, Paris

This translation first published 2004 by Routledge

First published in the Routledge Classics 2010
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2010.

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ISBN 0-203-85706-2 Master e-book ISBN

ISBN 10: 0–415–56784-X (pbk)

CONTENTS

Historical Introduction by Arlette Elkaïm-Sartre vii

Philosophical Introduction by Jonathan Webber xiii

Notes on the Translation  xxvii

PART I The Certain  1

The Intentional Structure of the Image  3

1 Description  4

I. The Method  4

II. First Characteristic: The Image is a Consciousness  5

III. Second Characteristic: The Phenomenon of Quasi-Observation  8

IV. Third Characteristic: The Imaging Consciousness Posits its Object as a Nothingness  11

V. Fourth Characteristic: Spontaneity  14

VI. Conclusion  14

2 The Image Family  17

I. Image, Portrait, Caricature  17

II. Sign and Portrait  21

III. From Sign to Image: Consciousness of Imitations  25

IV. From Sign to Image: Schematic Drawings  29

V. Faces in the Fire, Spots on Walls, Rocks in Human Form  35

VI. Hypnagogic Images, Scenes and Persons Seen in Coffee Grounds, in a Crystal Ball  37

VII. From Portrait to Mental Image  50

VIII. Mental Image  52

PART II The Probable  55

The Nature of the Analogon in the Mental Image  57

I. Knowledge  57

II. Affectivity  68

III. Movements  73

IV. The Role of the Word in the Mental Image  83

V. The Mode of Appearance of a Thing in the Mental Image  85

PART III The Role of the Image in Psychic Life  95

I. The Symbol  97

II. Symbolic Schemas and Illustrations of Thought  107

III. Image and Thought  112

IV. Image and Perception  120

PART IV The Imaginary Life  123

I. The Irreal Object  125

II. Conduct in the Face of the Irreal  136

III. Pathology of the Imagination  148

IV. The Dream  159

Conclusion  177

I. Consciousness and Imagination  179

II. The Work of Art  188

Notes  195

Index  204

HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION

by Arlette Elkaïm-Sartre

Sartre was a young schoolteacher in Le Havre in 1934 when he undertook to write a work on imagination.¹ He taught pupils for the baccalaureate. At that time, and for a long time after, French school students were introduced to the four classical fields of philosophy: general psychology (later called ‘theoretical psychology’), metaphysics, morals and logic. Imagination belonged to the area of psychology that Sartre taught his pupils, along with perception, memory, attention, the association of ideas, the emotions, etc. Psychology was defined as ‘positive science of psychic facts and the laws governing them’, expressly ruling out ‘any immediately practical or aesthetic point of view, any ontological or normative concern’.² The Imagination, a short work that appeared in 1936³, and The Imaginary, written at the same time but published four years later, and which could have been the author’s doctoral thesis⁴, hardly depart from the aims of psychology thus defined – at least formally – except in the conclusions of this latter writing.

But as we will soon see, facts, as Sartre understands them here, and consequently laws, will not have the same meaning as in the official handbook of psychology.

Right from the start, The Imaginary manifests Sartre’s resolution to turn his back on the theories that he was taught and in turn had to inculcate in his pupils. He knew by heart the arguments for these theories based on certain facts and the objections to these arguments based on other facts, themselves more or less challenged by rival theories: Condillac’s sensualism, according to which all the human faculties can be produced by assembling elementary sensations; the associationist theories, due to Hume, Mill, Taine, etc., and all the nuances that distinguish them in their ways of conceiving the relation between sensory impressions and ‘states of consciousness’ as well as in their ways of conceiving the laws that govern these; the rationalist theories that challenge associationism but in Sartre’s view retain the spirit of it. In perusing this large student handbook of the time, or more detailed treatises of psychology, such as that of George Dumas who was authoritative, one can easily see how much their writers, partly accepting the theory of associationism without wondering about the nature of association, have trouble in effectively refuting the automatism of psychic facts which goes hand in hand with this theory, while at the same time they would like to show the synthetic activity of consciousness.⁵

‘It must be that each man has been born to make, in order to understand the world, a new and solitary effort’, the young Sartre wrote candidly in a notebook. He retained the ambition to construct a new and concrete philosophy and it is with the concrete that he intends to begin here.⁶ This does not mean that in his exploration of the imaginary life, he will give primacy to matter, and even less so to the matter that science studies. He is convinced, for example, that ‘cerebral localisations’, however precise and complex the progress of technical instruments permits us to determine them, can explain nothing other than the conditions necessary for the existence of the psychic functions; they can never provide an account of the fact that I am a consciousness that perceives, remembers, imagines, and projects itself into the future.

It is worth remembering that another philosopher had, forty years earlier, opened a study of the psychic life by invoking concrete experience and intuition. It was Henri Bergson (1859–1914), whose Time and Free Will: An Essay on the Immediate Data of Consciousness had originally given Sartre the taste for philosophy. Although he had first published his outstanding books, such as Matter and Memory, at the end of the nineteenth century, the originality of his philosophy was still fully felt in France in the thirties, as much among psychologists as among metaphysicians. The 1935 edition of Cuvillier’s manual clearly counts his ideas as standing out strongly from previous theories, but with many reservations. Sartre cited it approvingly in his Ecrits de Jeunesse. Its relevance here is that the author of Nausea often has it in mind when writing The Imaginary, either to refute it, or to draw on one of its ideas, such as duration in psychic life. It is impossible to give even a vague idea of the whole of Bergson’s philosophy, in which psychology and metaphysics are interlinked, within the scope of this introduction: I want only to outline the intellectual framework within which Sartre wrote this work. I am content to point out that the author of Matter and Memory intended to refute associationism; like Sartre, he held that the mental image is not a weakened perception, a more or less automatic revival, but that it differs from perception in its very nature and, more generally, that the metaphysical question of human freedom and that of the being of consciousness are closely linked. In The Imagination, Sartre provided a detailed analysis of the contradictions that he saw in the position of the ‘vitalist’ philosopher for whom ‘the evolution of life, from its origins to man, evokes the image of a current of consciousness inserted in matter like an underground passage’.

But the concrete that concerns Sartre is far from Bergsonian intuition, which he considers too subjective. Besides, it will lead the philosopher to argue less and less, to cosmic reverie which is foreign to Sartre’s concerns. By ‘concrete’, he understands the points of support that make it possible for the data of experience to have sense. The most indubitable concrete is for him the cogito of Descartes. ‘I think, therefore I am’ is the affirmation that reflective consciousness is possible, and is a solid springboard for researching other truths: for Descartes, if I can be mistaken about the existence of the world so long as I have not proven that there is a God who guarantees its existence, I can at least be certain that I exist, since I think. It is the same for Sartre: ‘someone who, in an act of reflection, becomes conscious of “having an image” cannot be mistaken’. One should therefore initially explore all that reflective consciousness can reveal about the specific characteristics of the image, about what occurs for me when I have an image.

But why does The Imaginary have as a subtitle ‘A Phenomenological Psychology of the Imagination’? Let me first point out the Greek etymology of the word ‘phenomenon’: that which is shown, that which appears evidently, and which is therefore suitable to be described, to lead, as Descartes would have said, to ‘clear and distinct ideas’. There is a truth of appearance. Sartre was convinced of this by reading Edmund Husserl (1859–1938). In 1933, he began to study the German philosopher – still little known in France – by reading his work Ideas in the original.⁷ This study undoubtedly continued while he wrote The Imaginary. ‘For me’, wrote Sartre in February 1940, ‘to exhaust a philosophy is to reflect within its perspectives, and create my own private ideas at its expense, until I plunge into a blind alley. It took me four years to exhaust Husserl.’⁸

The approach of the philosopher who holds Sartre’s primary interest – and which seemed to him a radical foundation like the Cartesian suspension of judgement that allows the cogito – is to ‘bracket the natural positing of the world’. The philosopher Paul Ricoeur, who translated Husserl’s Ideas into French, wrote in his preface a comment expressing something similar to what Sartre had grasped:

I am at first lost and forgotten in the world, lost among things, lost in ideas, lost among plants and beasts, lost among others … Naturalism is to be understood as the lowest form of the natural attitude and as the level that includes its own collapse: for if I am lost in the world, I am already lending myself the character of a thing in the world.⁹

Treating consciousness ‘as a thing in the world’ is what contemporary psychology more or less does. But if one ‘brackets’ the controversial issue of the relation between consciousness and sensory givens – what Sartre calls the ‘matter’ of the image – what is left, as Husserl said, is that ‘all consciousness is consciousness of something’. Far from being a tautology, this affirmation means that all consciousness has an intentional structure; it means that in perception, mental imagery, and thought, consciousness, far from being a receptacle, is aimed at something outside itself. Psychology is offered a new perspective: to differentiate the modes of intentionality according to the situations where consciousness is at work – because consciousness is an act – and to treat sensory givens and knowledge in relation to intentionality. Sartre will adhere to this, for the case of ‘imaging consciousness’, in the first two parts of this work.

In the first part of The Imaginary, entitled ‘The Certain’, he outlines a phenomenological description of the mental image. The aim is to provide an inventory and an articulation, based on his own experience, of all that immediate reflection can reveal of the fact (or rather, the event) of having an image. This does not mean that he will reject what others have written about the image, or the experiments conducted before him, nor that he will definitively give up making hypotheses, but that he leaves his philosophical knowledge temporarily suspended.

The imagination is a broad field. It is not restricted to the mental image, the subjective evocation of an absent object, which is the most difficult form of imagination to describe, particularly because it occurs without obvious sensory support. It seemed necessary to Sartre to take a detour through other examples of ‘the image family’, more easily described since their sensible matter is present. He therefore considers the role of imaging consciousness in our dealings with portraits, caricatures, imitations, schematic drawings, etc., to try to discern, in each case, the interplay of the real (the perceived) and the irreal by which consciousness will aim at its object.

It is on returning to the mental image properly so called that Sartre takes up ‘the probable’. In his first attempt at phenomenological description, the more immediate, the question was: what is it for me to have an image? It is now a question of determining what an image is, at what consciousness actually aims, and what the structure of consciousness must be so that it is possible to imagine. However the mental image is almost inaccessible to reflection: as long as ‘I have an image’, I can say nothing of it without it vanishing, since the intentionality becomes different; when it is not there I cannot give a detailed account of it; in addition, when I evoke an image, for example, of an absent friend or the tune of a song, I am guided by no present sensory impression – visual, auditory, or otherwise. This is why, for some psychologists, the mental image does not exist.

For Sartre, there is indeed a sensible content, though it does not need a present perception as in the case of an imaging consciousness confronted by a performer’s imitation of a celebrity, for example. To support this hypothesis, he has recourse to introspection, not only his own, but also directed introspection such as it is practised with a certain rigour in experimental psychology, by the German Würzburg school, the French psychiatrist Alfred Binet, and many others.¹⁰ It will be seen how, in this second part, Sartre tries to demonstrate the manner in which knowledge, affectivity, and minute bodily movements come into play in the creation of the sensible matter of the mental image, which is to say the analogical representation of the real object of the imaging intention, and how the object aimed at and the analogon can enter into conflict. Contrary to Bergson, for example, for whom ‘all images act on and react to one another in all their elementary parts according to constant laws, which I call the laws of nature’ – which implies that the spontaneity of the sensible givens is an automatism – Sartre holds that the whole subject of the mental image spontaneously summons his strength to bring it about: the act by which consciousness presents itself with an absent object is similar to the incantation of a medium who claims, by a concentration of energy, to make the spirit of a dead person come into them.

The image is, according to most classical psychologists, a material trace, and thus affected with a certain inertia, whereas for Sartre, as one can see, it is the product of an act of consciousness, and so his conception of the relation between image and thought can only be different. It will not be a question of wondering how images can ‘combine’ so that thought is possible: the mental image is already on the side of thought. In the third part of his work, he subtly analyses the different levels of thought and the implications the image has for these levels, from the image-illustration that can paralyse or delay the effort of reasoning – or simply mark a pause – to the more evanescent symbolic schemas that partake of this effort while making possible, ‘as a fugitive outside’, the elaboration of a concept.

The fourth part is principally concerned with the irreality of the space and time of imaginary life. It is most particularly in the dream and in the pathologies of the image, like hallucination, that consciousness seems to be given if not a world, at least the ‘atmosphere of a world’ with its own space and duration. Sartre had read Freud’s The Interpretation of Dreams, without worrying too much about the theories underlying this work, pursuing his own path, interested especially in what the rich introspective material of the actual narration of the dreams can provide. He had also read the philosopher and psychiatrist Pierre Janet’s clinical descriptions, short biographies of patients that this clinician had treated for years in a hospital environment.¹¹ Although Sartre queries his general theoretical ideas, he takes account of his concrete observations, most notably of the particularities of the patients’ belief in their deliriums and their hallucinations, and the contradictions between the reality of their often close daily relations with their psychiatrist and the unreal worlds into which their pathologies plunge them.

Nevertheless, the hallucinatory image long troubled the author of The Imaginary: can one talk of intentionality in connection with the hallucinatory image, even though the patient appears to undergo it, to suffer and fear it? Sartre discussed this with the psychiatrist Daniel Lagache, who had been his fellow student at the École Normale, and who had just written Les Hallucinations Verbales et la Parole.¹² Sartre decided to be an experimental subject himself: under Lagache’s control, he was administered a mescaline injection, faithful to his determination to remain close to the concrete.

The two-part conclusion of The Imaginary is obviously a double move away from the field of psychology. The second, in line with his reflection in The Imaginary, is concerned with the activity of consciousness when faced with that irreal object, the work of art. One can suppose that the first, ‘Consciousness and Imagination’, was written last. It seems contemporaneous with his reading of Heidegger’s Being and Time in April 1939.¹³ Some psychologists contemporary with Sartre were anxious to discern the unity of psychology in its diverse areas of study. For forty or so years, many had been convinced that it was a science equal to physics and thrown themselves headlong into all kinds of psycho-physiological experiments and tests (measurement of feeling thresholds, intelligence tests, etc.). But ‘what could be more different, for example, than the study of the stroboscopic illusion and the study of the inferiority complex?’.¹⁴ Otherwise put, what global understanding of human being does psychology offer us? One goal becomes clear to Sartre at the end of The Imaginary: ‘To posit … as the object of our interrogation the human condition as an indivisible unity.’¹⁵ A being without substance, which is nothing but the outside of itself, which can create images in the absence of the object concerned, consciousness effects the negation of the real. Nothing, absence, negation: the reader of Being and Nothingness will easily judge that the study of imagination was a significant stage in setting up this ontological drama between consciousness (or being-for-itself), the nothingness that it generates, and being-in-itself.

PHILOSOPHICAL INTRODUCTION

by Jonathan Webber

What is imagination? What are we actually doing when we imagine? What are we aware of, and what kind of awareness do we have of it? The concept of imagination is central to a variety of debates, principally in aesthetics and philosophy of mind, yet these questions have rarely been addressed. Jean-Paul Sartre’s The Imaginary is the most sustained and detailed account of the nature of imagination in Western philosophical literature. It is the result of more than a decade’s work, over the course of which Sartre researched and formulated ideas about a wide range of issues. This range includes, for example, the nature of philosophical enquiry, the relation between philosophy and psychology, and the structures of emotion and of aesthetic experience. His theory of imagination is developed and defended partly through discussions and applications of these areas of his thought. As well as being of intrinsic interest, these discussions and applications and the theory of imagination they yield provide foundations for much of Sartre’s later existentialist work on the human condition and our responses to it. His theories of freedom and bad faith, for example, and of the nature of literature, quietly draw on thoughts and themes elaborated in this book.

In The Imaginary, Sartre aims to show that a seemingly diverse array of experiences – including make-believe, watching an impressionist, watching a play, looking at pictures, forming mental images – share a fundamental structure. He further aims to delineate this structure and show that it is distinct from both the structure of perception and that of conceptual thought. At the root of his theory is Edmund Husserl’s distinction between the matter of an experience and its form. In ordinary perception, according to Sartre, parts of our material environment provide the matter of experience. The form is provided by the attitude taken towards the matter. This attitude is a function of knowledge, affections, and goals pursued. This attitude is reflected back to us as the form or sense of the object perceived. It is due to my knowledge, affections, and goals that I see a certain chunk of matter not as a metal protuberance from a piece of wood, for example, but as a door handle that must be turned if I am to enter the interview room. Or it is because I am angry that I find a certain person obnoxious and repulsive.

In imagination, the bestowal of sense is different. The matter is not experienced as properly having a certain sense, but as presenting a sense borrowed from some other object. We do not perceive the matter as having that sense, but rather imagine that other object. A child does not misperceive a hobby-horse as a horse, but imagines a horse by using the hobby-horse as a prop. A photograph is not confused for the thing it is a photograph of, but that thing is imagined through the photograph. This is the structure that unites the various kinds of event that Sartre understands as imaginings: the matter of the experience is endowed with the sense of another object, and is understood as in some way presenting that other object. As Sartre makes clear in his discussion of mental images, the matter involved in imagining need not be a part of the perceivable material world. Sensations of movement, for example, can play the role of matter for imagination, or ‘analogon’ as Sartre also calls it.

Sartre’s use of this theory to explain the nature of depiction, or pictorial representation, provides an insightful contribution to the discussion of this issue in the philosophy of aesthetics. His discussion encompasses photographs, portraits, caricatures and schematic line drawings, and their relations to impersonations and images seen in patterns. This broad purview allows for a rich and detailed description of depiction. The nature of depiction is, perhaps surprisingly, very puzzling. A natural thought is that it might simply be a matter of resemblance. A landscape painting depicts a particular landscape, the thought runs, by sharing its arrangement of shapes and colours with that landscape at a particular time. Similarly, a picture of the grim reaper may share significant visual properties with the way the grim reaper is classically described as looking. And a picture may depict a horse without depicting any horse in particular by displaying significant visual properties shared by all, most, or paradigm cases of, horses.

This thought, however, is fraught with difficulties. One is that resemblance is a symmetric relation, so if an artist’s self-portrait resembles that artist, then the artist resembles the self-portrait. But since the artist does not depict the self-portrait, depiction is not symmetric. Similarly, resemblance is reflexive where depiction is not: every picture resembles but does not depict itself. In fact, it is not even obvious that a picture could ever depict the thing that it will always most closely resemble: if you were to draw a picture that depicted only itself, what would it look like? A further difficulty arises with specifying the respects in which a depiction resembles the depicted. A picture of a café may be grainy and monochrome, but the café may not. A photograph of an actor may be glossy and two-dimensional, but the actor may not. At least, not literally. Etchings, woodcuts, caricatures and schematic line drawings may have very little in common with the things they depict, and may differ from them in a great many respects. A depiction need share neither shape, nor colour, nor texture, it seems, with the thing it depicts.

These difficulties seem to suggest that it is a mistake to think of pictorial representation purely in terms of a relation between depiction and depicted. Resemblance is such a relation, which seems to hold independently of the thoughts and attitudes of the viewer. Linguistic representation, on the other hand, seems to be a matter of convention. Words and sentences represent what they represent in virtue of decisions and practices tacitly agreed upon by members of a particular linguistic community. Perhaps depiction should also be understood as conventional. Nelson Goodman has provided this kind of theory of depiction. His theory is that pictorial representation consists in systems of arbitrary but agreed symbols that, unlike linguistic systems, are such that even the slightest alteration to a visible symbol can make a difference to what it represents. So where the font or colour of a printed sentence make no difference to what that sentence represents, any alteration in a colour or shape on the surface of a canvas may affect how the depicted scene is represented as being. But as with languages, different pictorial systems can represent the same object or scene in different ways. The differences between cubist painting and black-and-white photography, for example, are akin to those between English and French: representations from each system can be equally adequate, but they rest on different conventions. Pictures that we find ‘realistic’ are simply those we can read most fluently.¹

One source of unease about Goodman’s theory is that it does not seem to take into account the visual nature of what is depicted. The theory seems to allow that just about anything, no matter how abstract, can be depicted. Of course, graphs might be described as pictures of abstract facts, but the kind of depiction we are concerned with here is one that seems to make the depicted object in some way present to the viewer, although not necessarily in such a way that the viewer mistakes the picture for the depicted object. This may underlie the natural thought that depiction is a matter of resemblance: the picture must in some way look as the depicted object looks. A second source of unease might be that in resting on the notion of convention, Goodman’s theory makes depiction too arbitrary. Conventions need have no rationale apart from the rationale of having a convention. It does not matter whether we drive on the left or the right side of the road, so long as we all do the same (on a given set of roads). But presumably the reason we find yellow pictures of bananas more realistic than blue ones is not that we are used to depictions of them being yellow, or that we have all tacitly agreed to represent them using yellow, but that bananas themselves are generally yellow. Again, this seems to indicate some resemblance between the visual nature of the depiction and that of the depicted.

Goodman’s emphasis on public conventions might also be criticized for underplaying the personal nature of at least some experiences of pictures. In his book on photography, dedicated ‘in homage to’ Sartre’s The Imaginary, Roland Barthes describes finding a photograph of his recently deceased mother taken when she was a child. ‘In this little girl’s image I saw the kindness that had formed her being’, he writes. This kindness ‘belonged to no system … I could not define it better than by this feature (among others): that during the whole of our life together, she never made a single “observation”. This extreme and particular circumstance, so abstract in relation to an image, was nevertheless present in the face revealed in the photograph I had just discovered.’² If Barthes is right to describe this kindness as present for him in the depiction, then it seems that depiction cannot just be a matter of public convention. The kindness depicted seems so abstract and detailed that no system of visual conventions could be so fine-grained as to capture it. And it seems, moreover, that it would require a particular knowledge of the woman in the picture to recognize it.

Sartre’s theory is that depiction results from a combination of resemblance and the response this elicits in the viewer. He distinguishes pictures from signs on the grounds that signs need bear no visual similarity to the objects they signify. But the visual similarity between a picture and the object it depicts can be very slight indeed. A portrait or photograph resembles the person it depicts in respect of shape and perhaps also colour or patterns of light and dark. This resemblance, argues Sartre, stimulates an affective response similar to the response that would be stimulated by the presence of the person depicted. This affective response endows the picture with the same sense that the person depicted would have for the viewer. This explains why the same portrait or photograph can have different qualities for different viewers, and also why the same viewer might have different reactions to portraits or photographs that capture different expressions of the same subject. It explains, moreover, how a person can be presented through a portrait or photograph: endowing the pictorial matter with the affective sense of the person depicted gives, in conjunction with knowledge about that person, something of the feeling of being in that person’s presence. This claim, of course, need not be restricted to paintings and photographs of people. So long as it is accepted that our experience of landscapes – and indeed all our visual experience – is suffused with beliefs and affections, then our experiences of paintings and photographs can in principle be suffused with the beliefs and affections normally associated with what they depict, or with things relevantly similar to what they depict.

This theory accommodates the intuitive appeal of the idea that depiction involves resemblance. But its emphasis on the viewer’s response averts the difficulties of the simple resemblance idea. Similarly, it accommodates the thought that depiction crucially involves the response of the viewer, while avoiding the problems that beset Goodman’s theory that depiction is purely a matter of convention. But this theory will not be enough to account for pictures that are very thin on detail, such as schematic line drawings.

This is why Sartre does not restrict the form of imaginative experience to knowledge and affective response, but adds that kinaesthetic sensations of bodily movement also play a role. Looking at a line drawing of a face, for example, the movements of our eyes following a line from one end to the other gives that line the sense of a nose, the movement away from the top of that line gives another line the sense of an eyebrow. Once the lines have this sense, they can operate as an analogon for a face, as matter for the image of a face. Awareness of eye movements also accounts for our ability to form images on the basis of arabesques on wallpaper, random patterns of spots on walls, patterns in flames or in clouds, and explains why we can sometimes see a face in the moon. The movements of our eyes along and around such patterns endows aspects of them with the same vectorial sense as familiar perceivable objects, and the patterns so organized can then function as matter for imaginative experiences. Sartre applies this theory to the puzzling phenomenon of hypnagogic imagery, images one can be aware of when falling asleep. In this case, he argues, the basis of the matter for the imaginative act is provided by phosphenes, or entoptic lights, which are patterns of light inside the eyeballs. In this case, however, the eyes cannot move along or around these patterns of light, since the lights are in the eyeballs and hence move with them. In so moving, however, phosphenes leave trails of light behind them, and these trails of light along with sensations of eye movement provide the analogon for imagining.

Depiction, then, is for Sartre a matter of animating an analogon, or representative matter, on the basis of our knowledge and our affective responses. In cases of portraits and photographs, the analogon is already constructed for the viewer. In the case of less rich, more suggestive depictions, and in cases where pictures are seen in patterns not designed for this purpose, the analogon is constructed by the viewer’s awareness of lines and patterns and of eye movements in relation to those lines and patterns.

Sartre extends this account of imaginative consciousness to our aesthetic experiences of watching plays and reading novels. In the case of plays, the imaginative apprehension of the scenes cannot be explained only in terms of the resemblance between the scenes and what they represent. An author’s description of a fictional character need not be so detailed as to allow resemblance between a particular actor, however dressed, and that character, and anyway the audience does not need to be familiar with the author’s description. So while cardboard trees on a stage resemble real trees, not all aspects of the audience’s imaginative engagement with a play can be stimulated by resemblance. Sartre addresses this problem when he discusses how Franconay, a short, plump, dark-haired woman, can successfully impersonate Maurice Chevalier, a tall, thin, light-haired man. He relies here on his distinction between signs and pictures. Signs, such as words, need not resemble what they signify. When Franconay dons a straw hat at a rakish angle, this signifies Maurice Chevalier, which evokes in the audience knowledge and affective responses appropriate to Maurice Chevalier, allowing the audience to imagine Maurice Chevalier through Franconay. Similarly, the setting, title, programme notes, and the ways the actors address one another on stage are signs on the basis of which the audience imagine the characters through the actors. The knowledge and affective responses involved largely result from general experience of life, but may also result from the play itself, accumulating as the story develops, or from previous acquaintance with the play. But the bodies of impersonators and actors become analogons by means of signification, not resemblance.

This theory can be extended to film and television. The difference here, of course, is that it is not bodies of actors that function as analogons but coloured or monochrome patterns of shapes on a screen. But can the theory be extended to reading? If a picture paints a thousand words, can a thousand words paint a picture? Sartre seems to think so. He argues that in the imaginative experience of reading a novel, the words cease to play the straightforward role of signs. Once the reader has understood the signs, they become suffused with the reader’s background knowledge of what they signify and become analogons for imagination. Through the phrase ‘Pierre’s office’, for example, the reader may imagine an office in a particular location, with a particular layout, as described earlier in the novel. Through imaginative engagement with the words, that is, the reader may experience the world they describe.

In this way, Sartre aims to present a unified theory of aesthetic appreciation as imaginative experience. The sensory pleasure gained from arrangements of colours and shapes on a canvas, he argues, should not be confused with the aesthetic pleasure gained from experiencing an imaginary object through the canvas. The artist presents the audience with an analogon, a canvas, through which the audience can imaginatively apprehend the aesthetic object itself. Similarly, the novelist presents the audience with a book, through which an aesthetic object can be imaginatively apprehended; and a performance of Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony is an analogon through which the audience can imagine the symphony itself.

This position affords interesting views of various problems in aesthetics. Take, for example, the issue of our emotional involvement with fiction. How can we be moved by the fate of Anna Karenina? There are various ways of understanding this question, such as whether it is rational to be so moved, or how it is psychologically possible to be so moved, but the core of the issue is that we are aware that fictional characters are fictional, that the events that move us are imaginary and not real, and yet we are still moved. It cannot simply be that we suspend our disbelief and consider the fictional scenes of films, plays, and novels as though they were real, for we do not engage with fictional events as though they were real: we do not, for example, try to intervene in the action, or call the police when a character is murdered, or run screaming when a monster appears. Sartre’s theory of the nature of imagination provides a way of answering this question. Our emotional involvement with fiction seems puzzling because it seems as though our emotions are reactions to the scenes that we imagine and that we are aware of as imaginary. But if Sartre is right, this puzzlement is based on a misunderstanding of the relation between imagination and affection. If it is rather that our affections are constitutive of our imagining the tribulations of Anna Karenina, then this emotional involvement is perfectly compatible with understanding the imaginary to be imaginary. In fact, it is required for it.³

This view of aesthetic experience also grounds Sartre’s later insistence, in What is Literature?, that writers can only ever address their contemporaries, whether they realize this or not. Reading is an imaginative act, involving knowledge and affectivity. The writer must therefore suppose certain areas of knowledge and certain kinds of affective reaction on the part of the reader. Writer and reader must share a common context. Later readers might engage with the text in the way the writer intended, but this can only be fortuitous: the writer cannot foresee cultural changes that might prevent this.⁴ Although Sartre makes this point only with reference to literature, it can be extended to other arts. The sounds of rustic bagpipes and shepherd flutes would have been familiar to eighteenth-century audiences. Oboe and flute passages in the works of Bach and Handel, therefore, would have had rustic connotations for their first audiences. Although we might be able to learn about these connotations, our lack of familiarity with rustic bagpipes and shepherd flutes prevents us from imaginatively engaging with those passages in the way that eighteenth-century audiences would have done.

Aesthetics aside, Sartre devotes much of the book to developing aspects of his theory of imaginative engagement with pictures, patterns, words, and sounds into a theory of mental images formed without the aid of such props. Daydreaming, memory recall, or simply considering how something might look can all involve visualizing or picturing something, and running through a tune in one’s head might be thought to involve an auditory version of the same ability. But how should this ability be understood? The history of philosophy and psychology offers us two basic models of the visual case. On the pictorial model, forming a mental image is simply conjuring up a picture. So when you form an image of the Panthéon in Paris, for example, you are aware of a mental picture of the Panthéon. On the experiential model, forming a mental image is simply bringing about an experience subjectively similar in relevant ways to perceiving the imaged object. So when you form an image of the Panthéon, you have an experience like that of seeing the Panthéon.

Sartre presents important criticisms of both of these models, as well as an interesting alternative. But he does not clearly distinguish the pictorial and the experiential models that he attacks. This is probably because in the three hundred years preceding the publication of The Imaginary, perception itself was generally understood as involving mental pictures. On such a view, to say that mental imagery consists in contemplating mental pictures is to say that it is akin to perceptual experience, and vice versa. This is the view that Sartre calls ‘the illusion of immanence’. The difference between perception and imagination, according to the illusion of immanence, consists in the reason the picture appeared, the relation between the picture and the world beyond the mind, and perhaps the vivacity of the picture. Throughout The Imaginary, Sartre is concerned not only to refute this view of the mind, but also to understand the pressures that have pushed theorists in its direction. The acceptability of an alternative model will, at least in part, be a function of how well it dissipates these pressures or can explain why they should be resisted.

Although Sartre does not distinguish the pictorial and experiential models of imagery, however, we should do so. After all, one might think that imagery involves pictures where perception does not, or think that neither imagery nor perception involve pictures but are alike in some other important respects. One reason to reject the pictorial model is that it is based on an overly simplistic understanding of the nature of depiction. It seems to suppose that being faced with a mental picture is enough to explain our imaginative relation to the thing that is depicted. But, as we have seen, depiction is not so simple. In fact, depiction cannot be explained without reference to the kind of experience involved in looking at the picture. Once this kind of experience has been delineated – as Sartre is aware – the resources for a theory of mental imagery are in place without the need to postulate mental pictures. Mental imagery, for Sartre, involves the same kind of experience as is involved in looking at photographs and portraits, but does not involve anything relevantly similar to a photograph or a portrait, mental or otherwise.

Some of the points that Sartre makes against the ‘illusion of immanence’ can be directed at the experiential model. These points are among the most interesting and insightful observations on the nature of imagination made in this book, or anywhere else for that matter. One fundamental difference between perception and imagination, argues Sartre, is that perception involves observation of the object perceived, whereas imagination involves only ‘quasi-observation’. An imagined object, like a perceived object, is presented in profile. To visualize a cube is not to visualize all six faces of it together, but rather to visualize how it might look from a particular angle. Unlike perception, however, there is nothing that can be discovered about the object as it is imaged. It is immediately certain that what I am visualising is a cube, and not for example some trick object that merely looks like a cube from this angle. There is always more to the perceived object than we can see, but imagination shares with conceptual thought the trait of its object having all and only the properties that it is presented as having. In perception, knowledge of the object is consequent upon the experience of it, whereas in imagination knowledge is prior to experience. You cannot learn how many columns support the pediment of the Panthéon in Paris, he points out, just by forming a mental image of the Panthéon. Your image will have the number of columns you believe the Panthéon to have, and may even have an indeterminate number of columns. Although Sartre always refers to ‘knowledge’ as a component of imaginative experience, it seems that the concept he requires is belief or opinion. You can know only what is the case, but you can form images on the basis of false beliefs. Your image can still be of the Panthéon even if it does not show eighteen columns supporting the pediment.

A related distinction between perception and imagination is that perceived objects can bear relations to one another independently of whether the perceiver is aware of those relations. But in imagination, objects are related in all and only the ways they are imagined to be related. Some of René Magritte’s paintings are based on this phenomenon. His Personal Values, for example, depicts a comb larger than the bed it is resting on, a shaving brush occupying the whole top surface of the wardrobe it is lying on, a match half the length of the bed, and a glass as big as the wardrobe. But it remains indeterminate whether these are giant objects in an ordinary bedroom, ordinary objects in a doll’s house, or just a collection of objects represented without any intended relations of size. The same painting can be seen in any of these ways, depending on the attitude of the viewer. Similarly, you can form a mental image of a banana next to a banana-sized model of the Eiffel Tower and you can form a different image of a giant banana the same size as the Eiffel Tower and standing next to it. The visual aspect of these two experiences can be exactly the same. So you cannot tell by observation whether you are imagining a souvenir in a fruit bowl or a giant banana in Paris. But imagining one is not the same as imagining the other. So mental images include aspects that are not purely visual, and which cannot be discerned by inspecting the visual aspect. Thus, in imagination the relations between objects are stipulated, where in perception they are discovered.

So the experiential model is no more acceptable than the pictorial: the kind of experience involved in mental imagery is different from that involved in perception. Yet mental imagery, unlike conceptual thought, makes its object seem in some way present, not merely indicated. Sartre argues that this presence is due to mental imagery involving the same kind of experience as depiction, a bestowal of sense that specifies an object other than the matter it is bestowed on. The matter in mental imagery, however, is not a perceivable part of the material world.

Herein lies a methodological issue for Sartre. His discussions of the relation between form and matter in aesthetic experiences are based on phenomenological description. They are based, that is, on first-personal reflection on the nature of the experiences under discussion. The matter of the experience in these cases is easily discernible. A portrait or photograph, for example, can be seen for itself. In the case of mental imagery, however, there is no obviously discernible matter. Sartre therefore consults the findings of experimental psychology in order to discern the matter involved in mental imagery. But he does not simply accept the pronouncements of psychologists. Rather, he critiques their experiments in the light of his phenomenological findings. For experimental data to be acceptable, the experiments must not have presupposed a conception of imagination at odds with the data of phenomenology. Theories based on acceptable experimental data, moreover, will never be more than probable: there will always be other possible ways of accounting for the same data. But phenomenological description, Sartre believes, is certain. This relationship between first-person description and third-person experimentation is the ‘phenomenological psychology’ mentioned in the book’s subtitle, and runs throughout the work.

On the basis of a critical review of experimental psychological literature, Sartre concludes that the matter involved in mental imagery is constructed out of purely subjective feelings. In some cases, this matter can be provided by affective feelings that you have towards the object or person to be imagined. Knowledge of (or beliefs or opinions about) this object or person then animates these feelings, giving them the sense of the presence of the object or person felt about. But in cases where movement or a specific visual shape is to be imagined, there may be no relevant affections. Sartre draws here on his analysis of schematic line drawings and images seen on the basis of patterns. The formation of some mental images involves bodily movement, and the kinaesthetic sensation of this movement provides the matter for the act. Try, for example, to form an image of a garden swing, or of the pendulum of a clock swinging to and fro. Your act of imagining, according to Sartre, will have involved some bodily movement on your part, however slight. Most probably, he claims, it will have been eye movement. The image was formed by giving the sensation of eye movement the sense of following a swing or pendulum. You can to some extent assess this claim for yourself. Try the experiment again, this time focusing your eyes on the page number on this page. Could you form a moving image? If so, did your eyes leave the page number as the image began to move? Or did any other part of your body move?⁵

The nature of mental imagery is an interesting issue in the philosophy of mind in its own right. But it may also have ramifications elsewhere. In particular, if hallucination can be understood as a form of imagination, as Sartre argues that it can, then the theory of imagination might have important ramifications for the theory of perception. The central issue in the philosophy of perception is the relation between perceptual experience and the world that it is experience of. How does perception provide us with knowledge? Is perceptual experience the direct manifestation of our surroundings, or is it simply grounds for inferences about those surroundings? Those who claim that perceptual experience does not directly reveal the world tend to argue that the experience involved in perception is the same as can be involved in hallucination and so cannot reveal the world as it is. If the experience I have when I see a tree, for example, is an experience I could have while hallucinating, then that experience cannot itself reveal the tree to me. At best, if I also believe that I am awake and probably not hallucinating, then the experience gives me reason to think that there is a tree in front of me.

Those who oppose this view, on the other hand, argue that if experience falls short of the world in this way, then we have no way of knowing what the world is really like. Beyond the veil of our experiences, they argue, could lie just about anything, so long as it accounts for the regularity and predictability of those experiences. Not only that, but it is difficult to see how our ordinary concepts of worldly objects, such as ‘rainbow’, ‘donkey’, and ‘carburettor’, can have any meaning unless they gain their meaning from actual or potential experiences of rainbows, donkeys, and carburettors.⁶

If Sartre is right that hallucination is a form of imagination, and the experience involved in imagination is different in kind from that involved in perception, then perception and hallucination do not involve the same kind of experience. The claim that perception involves the direct manifestation of the world then seems more acceptable. Of course, if Sartre’s theory of imagination itself turns out to be in need of revision, then so will any related theory of hallucination. There is one immediate difficulty, however, that must be obviated. It appears to be characteristic of hallucinations that they seem like perceptions. Imagination, on the other hand, is typically experienced as a creative act. Images may arise unbidden, of course, but they are not mistaken for perceptions.

Sartre does not deny this aspect of imagination. In fact, he gives it a central role in his theory. Where perception involves taking an object to be real and present, he claims, imagination ‘posits its object as a nothingness’. This means that the object is never posited as present. An imagined object can be posited as elsewhere, meaning existent but not present, as for example when I imagine the surface of the planet Mars. Or it can be posited as nonexistent, as when I imagine a unicorn, knowing that there are no unicorns. Or it can be posited simply as absent, without any commitment either to its existence elsewhere or to its nonexistence, as I might imagine a car that runs on water, without any belief about whether there are such things but believing nonetheless that there is not one present to me. Or, finally, it might simply not be imagined without any commitment to its existence, presence, or absence, as for example I might imagine a tree in some detail without any commitment to whether there is or is not any such tree in front of me or anywhere else. In none of these cases is the imagined object taken to be a present object tracked by experience.

Sartre adds to this that imagination is distinguished from perception by a feeling of spontaneity. Both perception and imagination include ‘nonthetic’ awareness of the kind of experience involved, and so the two seem different to the subject. Perceptual experience seems like a response to independent objects presented to it, argues Sartre, whereas imagination seems creative in relation to its object. He describes this feeling of spontaneity as a ‘counterpart’ of the fact that imagination posits its object as a nothingness. But there are three possible readings of this claim. It could mean that the sense of the imagined object as a nothingness indicates that it is being imagined, not perceived. Or it could mean that the object is posited as a nothingness precisely because the subject is aware of the creative spontaneity of the experience. Finally, it could simply mean that the subject has ‘nonthetic’ awareness of the structure of the imaging consciousness, and this structure is responsible for the object being posited as a nothingness.

So Sartre holds that hallucinations and dreams are imaginative experiences whilst also holding that imaginative experiences cannot be confused for perceptual ones. How, then, does he account for the fact that hallucinations and dreams can involve behaviour that seems appropriate to believing that the hallucinated or dreamed events are real? Such behaviour, he argues, does not arise from mistaking the imaginary for the real, but from taking up a new attitude towards the imaginary. This is imaginary behaviour with imaginary beliefs and imaginary feelings, a kind of make-believe. Sartre dramatizes this idea in his play The Condemned of Altona (or Loser Wins).⁷ The central character, Franz Gerlach, has kept himself locked in the attic of his father’s house for thirteen years since fighting for the Nazis on the Russian front. He imagines that his beloved Germany has gone to rack and ruin, and records speech after speech attempting to justify humanity to a future courtroom of crustaceans. Franz goes to great lengths to maintain his imaginary world, dressing in his old uniform decorated with chocolate medals, refusing to allow any time-pieces or newspapers into his loft, and swallowing copious amounts of champagne and amphetamines. Despite these strategies, Franz remains aware of the imaginary character of his world, slipping in and out of his role in it at will.

Sartre’s view, then, is that hallucination is not a malfunction of perception, but rather involves a different attitude to the world, an imaginary attitude that stipulates, rather than attempts to discover, the nature of things. This should not be taken as the claim that the change of attitude is always part of a calculated strategy. Sartre does not hold that all imagination is deliberate. A schizophrenic patient may be quite incapable of abandoning the imaginative attitude and taking up the perceptual attitude, at least during a schizophrenic episode. Drug-induced hallucinations and even dreams might similarly involve an inability, but perhaps only an unwillingness, to escape the imaginary attitude. But, as Sartre points out, this does not in itself show that hallucinations and dreams can be mistaken for perceptions.

This imaginary attitude is a central feature of Sartre’s discussions of ‘bad faith’, the use of various strategies to deceive oneself into believing whatever it is that one wants to believe. Franz Gerlach employs the imaginary attitude to deceive himself about the state of the world around him, and to portray himself to himself as a figure of great historical significance. Sartre’s extended discussion of the nature of bad faith, in Being and Nothingness, includes a celebrated passage describing the imaginative behaviour of a café waiter. This person’s ‘movement is quick and forward, a little too precise, a little too rapid’. He carries his tray ‘with the recklessness of a tightrope walker by putting it in a perpetually unstable, perpetually broken equilibrium’. Such affected behaviour is not restricted to waiters: ‘there is the dance of the grocer, of the tailor, of the auctioneer’. These performances provide an analogon for the imaginative apprehension of a waiter, grocer, tailor, or auctioneer, rather than the perceptual apprehension of a person. Just as we can imaginatively take the actor to be Hamlet, as clientele we can imaginatively take a person to be nothing more than the social role they fulfil. ‘A grocer who dreams is offensive to the buyer, because such a grocer is not wholly a grocer.’ The waiter might wish to imagine himself as wholly a waiter, in order that the demands of the job might seem a necessary part of his life rather than the results of choice. He might therefore engage in stereotypically waiterly behaviour, ‘play at being a waiter’, in order that his movements might form an analogon for his own imaginative apprehension of himself as wholly a waiter.⁸ It is a key tenet of Sartrean existentialism that we often engage in these imaginative games in order to hide aspects of ourselves from ourselves and from each other. Descriptions of such behaviour are sprinkled liberally throughout Sartre’s novels, sometimes to comic effect, sometimes to melancholic.

One of the most common purposes of bad faith, according to Sartre, is to hide our freedom from ourselves. For with freedom comes a terrible burden of responsibility. If we can just convince ourselves that our behaviour is somehow necessary, perhaps caused by the events that we find ourselves faced with, then we cannot be blamed for what we have done, or for what we have not done. Perhaps the waiter wants to convince himself that his station in life dictates his behaviour, and so forbids other possible activities. But we have no such excuse. We are not coerced by our surroundings. We are free. This freedom itself, for Sartre, is intimately bound up with imagination. We can imagine the world or any part of it being different from the way it in fact is. This ability is necessary to motivate changing the world. We can imagine it, moreover, as being different in any number of ways, and so can present ourselves with any number of ways that we might try to mould it. We are therefore not compelled to live in the world as we find it. We can and do act to change it, and this involves imagination.

Sartre goes on, in the Conclusion to The Imaginary, to argue that the world as I find it is already structured as a result of the activity of my imagination. In perception, I am not simply aware of a mass of reality. Rather, my surroundings have a sense for me. This sense results partly from my own aims and projects, and these involve imagination. This interplay of objective and subjective factors, and of the real and the imaginary, is what Sartre calls a ‘situation’. It is only because I have the aim of being in a certain room that I see something as a door handle to be turned. Otherwise I might simply see it as a metal protuberance from a piece of wood, or more simply as a chunk of matter. Having the aim of being inside the room, moreover, requires imagining being in that room. Similarly, it is because I can imagine a tidy office that piles of paper and other objects can look to me like mess that needs to be cleared away. My situation, then, is partly a result of my imagination. If Sartre is right about all this, then our behaviour is not dictated by our surroundings. Rather, the patterns of salience and significance in our surroundings that motivate our actions result partly from the ways we imagine the world could be. We are masters of our situations, not slaves to them.

The central tenets of Sartrean existentialism – situation, freedom, bad faith – are all, then, rooted in his theory of imagination. The Imaginary is an extremely rich and fertile text, not only replete with creative and critical insights concerning the nature of imagination and its role in aesthetic appreciation, but also containing a wealth of suggestive ideas that have grounded theorizing about a wider range of concerns, and that might be taken as inspiration for further thought.

NOTES ON THE TRANSLATION

This is a translation of the second edition of L’Imaginaire: Psychologie Phénoménologique de l’Imagination, revised by Sartre’s adopted daughter and literary executor Arlette Elkaïm-Sartre after the author’s death. I have aimed to render Sartre’s words into contemporary English with as little interference as possible. So I have not attempted to render Sartre’s views into the idioms of current anglophone philosophy. This has the result that readers familiar with the vocabulary of current anglophone philosophy may be misled, since Sartre uses terms they may recognize but not necessarily with the meanings they are used to. He writes, for example, of the intentional structures of consciousness ‘constituting’ the objects of consciousness, but does not mean by this that intentions are constitutive parts or structures of those objects. Rather, ‘constitution’ here is derived from Husserl’s‘Konstitution’: an object is constituted by consciousness in the sense that the structures that object appears as having reflect the way in which it is intended by consciousness. If an object is intended lovingly, then this love is manifested as ‘the charms of the loved person’ (Part II, § II). Sartre’s use of the term ‘content’ is similarly divergent from its current use in anglophone philosophy. If I see Pierre in a photograph, then according to Sartre my consciousness is directed not at the photograph but at Pierre. In the terminology of anglophone philosophy, Pierre features in the content of my mental state. But Sartre describes the photograph, in this case, as being the ‘content’ through which consciousness is directed at Pierre (see Part I, Chapter 2, § I).

There are two central exceptions to my rule of rendering Sartre into contemporary English. One is that I have rendered his term ‘analogon’ as ‘analogon’, reviving a nineteenth-century noun since eclipsed by its synonym ‘analogue’. The justification for this is twofold. First, Sartre’s term is a neologism in French, which he sometimes writes in ‘scare-quotes’, so it is clear that he considered it a technical term for his concept. Second, if the ‘analogon’ is the ‘matter’ involved in an imaginative act, then it would be misleading to refer to this as an ‘analogue’ since Sartre explicitly claims that this matter is never the perfect analogue of the imagined object (see Part I, Chapter 2, § 7).

The other departure from contemporary English is my use of ‘irreal’ and ‘irreality’, which are not English words at all. They are my rendering of the French adjective and noun ‘irréel’, usually translated as ‘unreal’ and ‘unreality’. But these would be misleading here. Sartre’s use of ‘irréel’ here seems to follow one sense of Husserl’s ‘irreal’. Since Husserl’s term is usually rendered into English as ‘irreal’, my rendering of Sartre’s term preserves this connection. Further, Sartre’s ‘irréel’ does not denote, as ‘unreal’ seems to, the class of objects that could exist but do not. Rather, an irreal object in this work is an object as imaged by consciousness. This object may be real: the irreal Pierre may be the real Pierre as imaged. Conversely, unreal objects that are never imaged will never be irreal. Finally, Sartre employs the verb ‘to irrealize’, even opening the work by describing imagination as ‘the great “irrealizing” function of consciousness’. To translate ‘irrealize’ here as ‘unrealize’ might be taken to imply that Sartre considered the imagination to be the function of removing items from reality, or considering real items as unreal. Although from around the middle of the work Sartre contrasts this use of ‘irrealizing’ with the ‘realizing’ function of perception, it is by this point abundantly clear that the contrast is between the kind of consciousness that constitutes an object as ‘irreal’ and the kind that constitutes an object as ‘real’.

In translating Sartre’s terminology into ordinary English, I have tried to keep key concepts distinct in English where they are marked by distinct terms in Sartre’s French. This is partly to preserve Sartre’s text as nearly as possible, and partly due to the following claim that Sartre made in an interview:

I never had any stylistic ambition for philosophy. Never, never. I tried to write clearly, that’s all … Style is, first of all, economy: it is a question of making sentences in which several meanings co-exist and in which the words are taken as allusions, as objects rather than as concepts. In philosophy a word must signify a concept and that one only.¹

Trying and succeeding, of course, are two different things. So it would be naive to assume that Sartre consistently denoted a single concept by the same word. But this is a stated aim of his philosophical writing, so it makes sense to try to map his key technical terms onto English terms in one-to-one correlations. Thus, in this translation: ‘affectivity’ always translates ‘affectivité’, ‘feeling’ translates ‘sentiment’; ‘mind’ translates ‘esprit’, ‘soul’ translates ‘âme’; and ‘comprendre’ and its cognates are ‘comprehend’ (not ‘understand’) and its cognates whenever Sartre is discussing research into the role of imagination in comprehension. Sartre’s terms for the relation of consciousness to its object are translated as ‘directed at’ (dirigé), ‘aimed at’ (visé), and ‘aimed towards’ (‘tendue vers’).

But since natural languages do not map onto one another so straightforwardly, there are exceptions to the simple rules. When exceptions are relevant, they are marked in the text by Sartre’s French term in brackets. (There are also occasional German terms. These are in German in the original text and so have been left.) Although ‘thought’ is generally ‘pensée’, for example, it is used once, due to context, to translate ‘songe’, which primarily means‘daydream’.

The term ‘knowledge’ and its cognates generally translate ‘savoir’ and its cognates. Where it translates ‘connaissance’ in a technical context and in Sartre’s own voice, I have indicated that it does so. The relation between these two terms is complex, since ‘connaissance’ takes an object where ‘savoir’ takes a proposition. That is, the former is used to indicate knowledge of a particular thing, such as knowledge of London or of French, whereas the latter is used to indicate knowledge that such-and-such is the case, such as knowing that London is the capital of England or that ‘chat’ is French for ‘cat’. The relations between knowledge-of and knowledge-that are a matter of philosophical dispute. It is unclear from this work whether Sartre held a position on this matter. On the one hand, he sometimes seems to use the two interchangeably, as when he talks of ‘an affectivity that is savoir, a connaissance that is feeling’ (Part II, § 2). On the other, he seems to claim that the savoir employed in seeing schematic images includes connaissance of the lines of the drawing plus other intentions (Part I, Chapter 2, § 4). Since knowledge plays a central role in imagination as Sartre conceived it, I considered it important to leave it to the reader to interpret these passages. Also, I have translated Sartre’s plurals savoirs and connaissances as ‘pieces of knowledge’, since ‘knowledges’ is barely comprehensible in English. Since this term is my own, nothing should be read into this use of ‘pieces’.

More complicated is Sartre’s use of ‘remplir’, which can mean both ‘to fulfil’ and ‘to fill’. Since Sartre uses this term to translate Husserl’s erfüllen (which is similarly ambiguous), I have normally followed translators of Husserl in rendering it ‘to fulfil’. This is also sometimes demanded by context, as when Sartre claims that a content through which I imagine an object ‘must remplir certain conditions’ (Part I, Chapter 2, § 8). But the context sometimes demands its translation as ‘full’, as when he describes a schematic drawing as ‘rempli to bursting’ (Part I, Chapter 2, § 4).

This ambiguity underlies an interpretational issue. One key difference between imagining an object and merely thinking of that object, for Sartre, following Husserl, is that imagination in some way presents its object, where pure thought does not. In Husserl’s terminology, an imaginative act is fulfilled, where an act of thought is not. But it is a matter of interpretation whether Sartre here understands this fulfilment as involving a literal filling-in of the act of consciousness. For example, Sartre sometimes uses remplir as interchangeable with pleine, which means ‘full’, as when he talks of the ‘remplir’ consciousness of a swallow as ‘pleine of swallow’ (Part II, § 1). Similarly, he contrasts a rempli consciousness with a vide (empty) one, following Husserl’s contrast of an Erfüllung consciousness with a leer one. Sartre’s contrast between remplir and vide, then, perfectly captures the ambiguity of Husserl’s contrast between erfüllen and leer: it is unclear whether the former term is to mean ‘to fulfil’,‘to fill’, or both. This is perhaps why Sartre has used the term satisfaire, ‘to satisfy’, as a replacement for remplir in the sense of ‘to fulfil’ only once in this work (in Part II, § 5, when discussing visualizing the Panthéon in its absence).

This ambiguity between filling and fulfilling in both French and German partly underlies Sartre’s controversial claim in Being and Nothingness that Husserl, like George Berkeley, holds that the world and its furniture are constructed from mind-dependent appearances.² If my perceptual experience of a cat is fulfilled, this is because there is a cat in front of me. But if this fulfilment is ultimately due to my perceptual consciousness containing coloured shapes that make up the visible aspect of the cat, then it seems that the cat is constructed out of these mind-dependent objects. This ambiguity, then, seems important to understanding Sartre’s relation to Husserl’s phenomenology, in both The Imaginary and Being and Nothingness. I have preserved and indicated it by translating ‘remplir’ and its cognates with ‘to fulfil’ and its cognates, unless the context demands ‘tofill’ in which case I indicate that this translates ‘remplir’.

A difficulty of interpretation may arise in connection with Sartre’s use of ‘intime’, which I have generally translated as ‘inner’, though occasionally as ‘intimate’. In particular, I use ‘inner sense’ to translate Sartre’s adoption of Pierre-François Maine de Biran’s phrase ‘sens intime’. This use of ‘inner sense’ should not be taken to imply a distinction between inner and outer foreign to Sartre’s conception of consciousness. Sartre explicitly rejects the conception of consciousness as an inner mental world distinct from the world we live in. The connotation of ‘intimate’ should be borne in mind. Sartre means to indicate our awareness of that which is closest to us

In order to present Sartre’s thought as faithfully as possible, I have neither altered any emphases nor added explanatory notes. I have endeavoured to tidy up Sartre’s haphazard references, giving full bibliographical information, but this has not always been possible. I have not added references where Sartre gave none. The only notes that are not Sartre’s are one by Arlette Elkaïm-Sartre indicating an emendation she made to the text and comments of my own added to two footnotes to indicate that I have altered the text where Sartre had misquoted.

Where English translations of works that Sartre cites are available, I have quoted directly from and given references to those translations. The only exception to this is Sartre’s discussion of Bergson’s Mind-Energy. The translator of that work rendered ‘schéma’ as ‘scheme’, which I have replaced with ‘schema’ not only because this is more accurate, but also to harmonize with my translation of Sartre’s use of the term. All references are given in full when first cited, and by author name and title or abbreviated title in subsequent citations.

I am grateful to Tom Baldwin, Arlette Elkaïm-Sartre, Rob Hopkins, Suzi Wells, and three anonymous readers for Routledge for their helpful comments on this work. Any remaining infelicities are, of course, entirely my own responsibility.

Part I
The Certain

THE INTENTIONAL STRUCTURE OF THE IMAGE

This work aims to describe the great ‘irrealizing’ function of consciousness, or‘imagination’, and its noematic correlate, the imaginary.

I have permitted myself to use the word ‘consciousness’ in a sense a little different from that which it usually receives. The expression ‘state of consciousness’ implies, for psychic structures, a kind of inertia or passivity that seems to me incompatible with the data of reflection. I use the term ‘consciousness’ not to designate the monad and the set of its psychic structures, but to name each of these structures in its concrete particularity. I will therefore speak of the image consciousness, the perceptual consciousness, etc., inspired by one of the senses of the German word Bewusstsein.

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DESCRIPTION

I.  THE METHOD

Despite some prejudices, to which we will return, it is certain that when I produce in myself the image of Pierre, it is Pierre who is the object of my current consciousness. So long as that consciousness remains unaltered, I can give a description of the object as it appears to me as imaged, but not of the image as such. To determine the characteristics of the image as image, it is necessary to turn to a new act of consciousness: it is necessary to reflect. So the image as image is describable only by a second-order act in which the look is turned away from the object and directed at the way in which the object is given. It is this reflective act that permits the judgement ‘I have an image’.

It is necessary to repeat here what has been known since Descartes: a reflective consciousness delivers us absolutely certain data; someone who, in an act of reflection, becomes conscious of ‘having an image’ cannot be mistaken. Undoubtedly there have been psychologists who affirm that we cannot, in the limiting case, distinguish an intense image from a weak perception. Titchener even appeals to certain experiments in support of this thesis. But we will see later on that these affirmations depend on an error. In fact, confusion is impossible: what is conventionally called an ‘image’ gives itself immediately as such to reflection. But this is not a matter of a metaphysical and ineffable revelation. If these consciousnesses are immediately distinguishable from all others, it is because they present themselves to reflection with certain marks, certain characteristics that immediately determine the judgement ‘I have an image’. The act of reflection therefore has an immediately certain content that I will call the essence of the image. This essence is the same for everyone; the first task of psychology is to make it explicit, describe it, fix it.

Why then, one might ask, is there an extreme diversity of doctrines? The psychologists should all agree, if they refer to this immediate knowledge. My answer is that the majority of psychologists do not refer to it. They leave it in an implicit state and prefer to build explanatory hypotheses about the nature of the image.¹ These, like all scientific hypotheses, never have more than a certain probability: the data of reflection are certain.

All new studies of the image must therefore begin with a radical distinction: a description of the image is one thing, inductive claims about its nature another. Passing from one to the other is passing from the certain to the probable. The first duty of the psychologist is evidently to fix in concepts the immediate and certain knowledge.

We will leave the theories on one side. We want to know nothing of the image but what reflection can teach us. Later on, I will try, as do other psychologists, to classify the image consciousness among the other consciousnesses, to find it a ‘family’, and to form hypotheses about its inner nature. For now I want only to attempt a ‘phenomenology’ of the image. The method is simple: produce images in ourselves, reflect on these images, describe them, which is to say, try to determine and classify their distinctive characteristics.

II.  FIRST CHARACTERISTIC: THE IMAGE IS A CONSCIOUSNESS

At the first reflective glance, we see that we have so far committed a double error. We thought, without justifying it to ourselves, that the image was in consciousness and that the object of the image was in the image. We depicted consciousness as a place peopled with small imitations and these imitations were the images. Without any doubt, the origin of this illusion must be sought in our habit of thinking in space and in terms of space. I will call it: the illusion of immanence. It finds its clearest expression in Hume, who distinguishes ideas and impressions:

The perceptions, which enter with the most force and violence, we may name impressions … By ideas I mean the faint images of these in thinking and reasoning…²

These ideas are none other than what we call images. Then he adds, a few pages further on:

But to form the idea of an object, and to form an idea simply is the same thing; the reference of the idea to an object being an extraneous denomination, of which in itself it bears no mark or character. Now as ’tis impossible to form an idea of an object, that is possest of quantity and quality, and yet is possest of no precise degree of either; it follows that there is an equal impossibility of forming an idea, that is not limited and confin’d in both these particulars.³

So my current idea of chair refers only externally to an existing chair. It is not the chair in the external world, the chair that I perceived earlier; it is not that chair of straw and wood that allows me to distinguish my idea from ideas of table or of inkwell. Nevertheless my current idea really is an idea of chair. What does this mean, if not that, for Hume, the idea of chair and the chair as idea are one and the same thing? To have an idea of chair is to have a chair in consciousness. Good proof of this is that what applies to the object applies to the idea. If the object must have a determinate quantity and quality, the idea must also possess these determinations.

Psychologists and philosophers have mainly adopted this point of view. It is also that of common sense. When I say that ‘I have an image’ of Pierre, it is thought that I presently have a certain portrait of Pierre in consciousness. The object of my current consciousness is precisely this portrait, and Pierre, the man of flesh and blood, is reached only very indirectly, in an ‘extrinsic’ manner, only by the fact that he is what the portrait represents. Likewise, in an exhibition, I can contemplate a portrait for itself at length, without seeing written at the bottom of the picture ‘Portrait of Pierre Z …’. In other words, an image is implicitly assimilated to the material object that it represents.

What can be surprising is that the radical heterogeneity of consciousness and the image thus conceived was never felt. Without doubt, the illusion of immanence was always left implicit. Otherwise it would have been understood that it was impossible to slip these material portraits into a conscious synthetic structure without destroying the structure, cutting the contacts, stopping the current, breaking the continuity. Consciousness would cease to be transparent to itself; everywhere its unity would be broken by the inassimilable, opaque screens. In vain did works like those of Spaier, Bühler, Flach soften this same notion of image, showing it full of life, penetrated with feeling and knowledge; the image, raised to the status of an organism, remains nonetheless an inassimilable product for consciousness. It is for this reason that certain logical minds, like F. Moutier, believed that we must deny the existence of mental images to save the integrity of the psychic synthesis.⁴ This radical solution is contradicted by the data of introspection. I can, at will, imagine a horse, a tree, a house. And yet if we accept the illusion of immanence, we are necessarily led to constitute the world of the mind from objects very similar to those of the external world and which, simply, obey different laws. Let us leave these theories aside and, to deliver us from the illusion of immanence, let us see what reflection teaches us.

When I perceive a chair, it would be absurd to say that the chair is in my perception. My perception is, in accordance with the terminology that we have adopted, a certain consciousness and the chair is the object of that consciousness. Now I close my eyes and I produce the image of the chair that I have just perceived. The chair, now being given as imaged, can no more enter into consciousness than previously. An image of a chair is not and cannot be a chair. Actually, whether I perceive or imagine this straw-bottomed chair on which I sit, it always remains outside of consciousness. In both cases it is there, in space, in that room, in front of the desk. Now – this is, above all, what reflection teaches us – whether I perceive or imagine that chair, the object of my perception and that of my image are identical: it is that straw-bottomed chair on which I sit. It is simply that consciousness is related to this same chair in two different ways. In both cases, it aims at the chair in its concrete individuality, in its corporeality. Only, in one of the cases, the chair is ‘encountered’ by consciousness; in the other, it is not. But the chair is not in consciousness. Not even as an image. It is not a matter of an imitation chair that suddenly entered into consciousness and has only an ‘extrinsic’ relation to the existing chair; it is a matter of a certain type of consciousness, which is to say of a synthetic organization, relating directly to the existing chair and whose inner essence is precisely to relate in such-and-such a manner to the existing chair.

And what exactly is the image? It is evidently not the chair: in general, the object of the image is not itself an image. Will we say that the image is the total synthetic organization, the consciousness? But this consciousness is a current and concrete nature, which exists in itself and for itself, and can always give itself to reflection without intermediary. The word ‘image’ could only indicate therefore the relation of consciousness to the object; in other words, it is a certain way in which the object appears to consciousness, or, if one prefers, a certain way in which consciousness presents to itself an object. To tell the truth, the expression ‘mental image’ gives rise to confusion. It would be better to say ‘consciousness of Pierre-as-imaged’ or ‘imaging consciousness of Pierre’. As the word ‘image’ is long-standing, we cannot reject it completely. But, to avoid all ambiguity, I repeat here that an image is nothing other than a relation. The imaging consciousness that I have of Pierre is not a consciousness of an image of Pierre: Pierre is directly reached, my attention is not directed at an image, but at an object.⁵

So, in the weave of the synthetic acts of consciousness there appear at times certain structures that we call imaging consciousnesses. They are born, develop, and disappear according to laws specific to them and that we will try to determine. And it would be a grave error to confuse this life of the imaging consciousness, which endures, becomes organized, and disintegrates, with the object of this consciousness, which, meanwhile, may well remain immutable.

III. SECOND CHARACTERISTIC: THE PHENOMENON OF QUASI-OBSERVATION

When we began this study we thought that we would be dealing with images, which is to say with elements of consciousness. We now see that we are dealing with complete consciousnesses, which is to say with complex structures that ‘intend’ certain objects. Let us see whether reflection cannot teach us more about these consciousnesses. It will be simplest to consider the image in relation to the concept and to perception. To perceive, to conceive, to imagine: such are indeed the three types of consciousness by which the same object can be given to us.

In perception I observe objects. It should be understood by this that the object, though it enters whole into my perception, is never given to me but one side at a time. Consider the example of a cube: I do not know it is a cube unless I have seen its six faces; I can possibly see three together, but never more. It is necessary therefore that I apprehend them successively. And when I pass, for example, from the apprehension of faces ABC to faces BCD, it always remains possible that face A disappeared during my change of position. The existence of the cube will therefore remain doubtful. At the same time, we must notice that when I see three faces of the cube together, these three faces are never presented to me like squares: their lines are flattened, their angles become obtuse, and I must reconstitute their nature as squares starting from the appearances in my perception. All this has been said a hundred times: it is characteristic of perception that the object never appears except in a series of profiles, of projections. The cube is indeed present to me, I can touch it, see it; but I can never see it except in a certain way, which calls for and excludes at the same time an infinity of other points of view. One must learn objects, which is to say, multiply the possible points of view on them. The object itself is the synthesis of all these appearances. The perception of an object is therefore a phenomenon of an infinity of aspects. What does this signify for us? The necessity of making a tour of objects, of waiting, as Bergson said, until the ‘sugar dissolves’.

When, on the other hand, I think of a cube by a concrete concept, I think of its six sides and its eight angles at the same time; I think that its angles are right angles, its sides squares.⁶ I am at the centre of my idea, I apprehend its entirety in one glance. Naturally, this is not to say that my idea does not need to be completed by an infinite progression. But I can think the concrete essences in a single act of consciousness; I do not need to recover images, I have no apprenticeship to serve. Such is without doubt the clearest difference between thought and perception. That is why we can never perceive a thought nor think a perception. They are radically distinct phenomena: one is knowledge conscious of itself, which places itself at once in the centre of the object; the other is a synthetic unity of a multiplicity of appearances, which slowly serves its apprenticeship.

What will we say of the image? Is it apprenticeship or knowledge? Let us note initially that it seems ‘on the side of’ perception. In the one as in the other the object gives itself by profiles, by projections, by what the Germans designate by the apt term ‘Abschattungen’. Only, we no longer need to make the tour of it: the imaged cube is given immediately for what it is. When I say ‘the object I perceive is a cube’, I make a hypothesis that the later course of my perceptions may oblige me to abandon. When I say ‘the object of which I have an image at this moment is a cube’, I make here a judgement of obviousness: it is absolutely certain that the object of my image is a cube. What does this say? In perception, knowledge is formed slowly; in the image, knowledge is immediate. We see now that the image is a synthetic act that links a concrete, not imaged, knowledge to elements more properly representative. An image is not learned: it is organized exactly as the objects that are learned, but, in fact, it is given whole, for what it is, in its appearance. If you turn a cube-image in thought to amuse yourself, if you pretend that it presents its various faces to you, then you will not be more advanced at the end of the operation: you will not have learned anything.

This is not all. Let us consider this sheet of paper on the table. The more we look at it, the more it reveals to us of its characteristics.

Each new orientation of my attention, of my analysis, reveals to me a new detail: the upper edge of the sheet is slightly warped, the end of the third line is dotted, etc. But I can keep an image in view as long as I want: I will never find anything there but what I put there. This remark is of the utmost importance in distinguishing the image from perception. In the world of perception, no ‘thing’ can appear without maintaining an infinity of relations to other things. Better, it is this infinity of relations – as well as the infinity of the relations that its elements support between them – it is this infinity of relations that constitutes the very essence of a thing. Hence a kind of overflowing in the world of ‘things’: there is, at every moment, always infinitely more than we can see; to exhaust the richness of my current perception would take an infinite time. Let us not be mistaken here: this kind of ‘overflowing’ is constitutive of the very nature of objects. When it is said that an object cannot exist without a definite individuality, it is necessary to understand by this ‘without maintaining an infinity of determinate relations with the infinity of other objects’.

But in the image, on the other hand, there is a kind of essential poverty. The different elements of an image maintain no relations with the rest of the world and maintain only two or three relations between themselves: those, for example, that I could note, or those that it is presently important to retain. It should not be said that the other relations exist in secret, that they wait until a beam of light moves on them. No: they do not exist at all. Two colours, for example, which maintain a certain discordant relation in reality can coexist in imagery without having any kind of relation between them. The objects exist only in so far as they are thought. This is what is incomprehensible for all those who consider the image a reborn perception. Indeed, it is not at all a question of a difference in intensity, but rather the objects of the world of images could in no way exist in the world of perception; they do not meet the necessary conditions.⁷

In a word, the object of perception constantly overflows consciousness; the object of an image is never anything more than the consciousness one has of it; it is defined by that consciousness: one can never learn from an image what one does not know already. Admittedly, it can happen that a memory image – the face of somebody, or a certain place – springs up unexpectedly. But, even in such a case, it is given to intuition in one piece, it delivers in one glance what it is. If I perceived this patch of grass, I should study it for some time to know where it comes from. In the case of the image, I know it immediately: it is the grass of such-and-such a meadow, at such-and-such a place. And this origin cannot be deciphered from the image: in the very act that gives me the object as imaged is included the knowledge (connaissance) of what it is. One will object, admittedly, that there are rather rare cases where a memory image retains anonymity: all of a sudden, I see again a dreary garden under a grey sky and it is impossible for me to know where and when I saw this garden. But this is quite simply a determination that the image lacks, and no observation, however prolonged, could give me the knowledge (connaissance) that I lack. If I discover, a little later, the name of the garden, it is by means of processes that have nothing to do with pure and simple observation: the image gave at once all that it possessed.⁸

Thus the object, in the image, is presented as having to be apprehended in a multiplicity of synthetic acts. Because of this fact, because its contents retain, like a phantom, a sensible opacity, because it involves neither essences nor generating laws but only an irrational quality, it seems to be the object of observation: from this point of view the image would be closer to perception than to the concept. But, in addition, the image does not teach anything, never gives the impression of novelty, never reveals an aspect of the object. It delivers it as a whole. No risk, no waiting: a certainty. My perception can mislead me, but not my image. Our attitude in relation to the object of the image could be called ‘quasi-observation’. We are, indeed, placed in the attitude of observation, but it is an observation that does not teach anything. If I give myself in image the page of a book, I am in the attitude of the reader, I look at the printed lines. But I do not read. And, at bottom, I am not even looking, because I already know what is written.

Without abandoning the domain of pure description, one can try to explain this characteristic property of the image. In the image, indeed, a certain consciousness gives itself a certain object. The object is therefore correlative with a certain synthetic act, which includes among its structures a certain knowledge and a certain ‘intention’. The intention is at the centre of consciousness: it is the intention that aims at the object, which is to say, that constitutes it for what it is. The knowledge, which is indissolubly linked to the intention, specifies that the object is such or such, adds determinations synthetically. To constitute as an image in oneself a certain consciousness of the table is at the same time to constitute the table as an object of imaging consciousness. The object as imaged is therefore contemporary with the consciousness that I have of it and it is exactly determined by that consciousness: it includes in itself nothing but what I am conscious of; but, inversely, everything that constitutes my consciousness finds its correlate in the object. My knowledge is nothing other than knowledge of the object, knowledge concerning the object. In the act of consciousness, the representative element and the knowledge element are linked in a synthetic act. The correlative object of this act is therefore constituted as a concrete, sensible object and at the same time as an object of knowledge. This results in the paradoxical consequence that the object is present for us externally and internally at the same time. Externally, because we observe it; internally, because it is in it that we observe what it is. This is why extremely poor and truncated images, reduced to a few spatial determinations, can have a rich and profound sense for me. And this sense is there, immediate, in these lines, it is given without a need to decipher it. This is also why the world of images is a world where nothing happens. I can easily, at my liking, move such-and-such an object as imaged, turn a cube, make a plant grow, make a horse run, there will be never the smallest time-lag between the object and the consciousness. Not a second of surprise: the object that is moving is not alive, it never precedes the intention. But neither is it inert, passive, ‘worked’ from the outside, like a marionette: the consciousness never precedes the object, the intention reveals itself at the same time as it realizes itself, in and by its realization.⁹

IV.  THIRD CHARACTERISTIC: THE IMAGING CONSCIOUSNESS POSITS ITS OBJECT AS A NOTHINGNESS

All consciousness is consciousness of something. Unreflective consciousness aims at objects different in kind from consciousness: for example, the imaging consciousness of a tree aims at a tree, which is to say a body that is by nature external to consciousness; consciousness goes out of itself, transcends itself.

If we want to describe this consciousness, it is necessary, we have seen, that we produce a new consciousness called ‘reflective’. For the first is entirely consciousness of the tree. However, care should be taken: all consciousness is consciousness through and through. If the imaging consciousness of a tree, for example, were conscious only as an object of reflection, then it would be, in the unreflected state, unconscious of itself, which is a contradiction. It must, therefore, since it has no other object than the tree as imaged and is itself an object only for reflection, contain within it a certain consciousness of itself. Let us say that it possesses an immanent and nonthetic consciousness of itself. It is not our business to describe this nonthetic consciousness. But it is evident that our description of the imaging consciousness would be very incomplete if we do not seek to know:

1 How the unreflective consciousness posits its object.

2 How this consciousness appears to itself in the nonthetic consciousness that accompanies the positing of the object.

The transcendent consciousness of a tree as imaged posits the tree. But it posits it as imaged, which is to say in a certain manner, which is not that of perceptual consciousness.

People have often proceeded as if the image were initially constructed on the model of perception and then something (reducer, knowledge, etc.) intervened to put it in its proper place as an image. The object as imaged would therefore be constituted first in the world of things, in order to be, afterwards, driven from this world. But this thesis does not correspond to the data of phenomenological description; moreover, we have seen in another work that, if perception and image are not by nature distinct, if their objects are not given to consciousness as sui generis, there will not remain any means for us to distinguish these two ways in which objects are given; in a word, we have observed the insufficiency of external criteria of the image. It is therefore necessary – since we want to talk of images, since this term has a sense for us – that the image, taken in itself, contains in its inner nature an element of radical distinction. A reflective investigation will make us find this element in the positional act of the imaging consciousness.

Every consciousness posits its object, but each in its own way. Perception, for example, posits its object as existing. The image also includes an act of belief or a positional act. The act can take four and only four forms: it can posit the object as nonexistent, or as absent, or as existing elsewhere; it can also‘neutralize’ itself, which is to say not posit its object as existent.¹⁰ Two of these acts are negations; the fourth corresponds to a suspension or neutralization of the thesis. The third, which is positive, assumes an implicit negation of the natural and present existence of the object. These positional acts – this remark is crucial – are not superimposed on the image after it is constituted: the positional act is constitutive of the image consciousness. Any other theory, indeed, not only would be contrary to the data of reflection, but also would lead us into the illusion of immanence.

This positing of absence or of nonexistence can occur only where quasi-observation is concerned. On the one hand, indeed, perception posits the existence of its object; on the other hand, concepts and knowledge posit the existence of natures (universal essences) constituted by relations and are indifferent to the ‘flesh and blood’ existence of objects. To think the concept ‘man’, for example, is to posit nothing but an essence, since, as Spinoza said:

the true definition of each thing neither involves nor expresses anything apart from the nature of the defined thing. From this it follows that no definition either involves or expresses a certain number of individuals.¹¹

To think of Pierre by a concrete concept is only to think of a collection of relations. Among these relations can be found determinations of place (Pierre is on a trip to Berlin, he is a lawyer in Rabat, etc.). But these determinations add a positive element to the concrete nature ‘Pierre’; they never have that privative, negative character of the positional acts of the image. It is only on the ground of sensory intuition that the words ‘absent’, ‘far from me’ can have a sense, on the ground of a sensory intuition that gives itself as not being able to take place. For example, if the image of a dead loved one appears to me abruptly, there is no need for a ‘reduction’ to feel the ache in my heart: it is part of the image, it is the direct consequence of the fact that the image gives its object as a nothingness of being.

There undoubtedly exist judgements of perception that involve a neutralized positional act. This is what happens when I see a man coming towards me and I say ‘It is possible that this man is Pierre’. But, precisely, this suspension of belief, this abstention, concerns the man approaching. Of this man, I doubt that he is Pierre; I do not thereby doubt that he is a man. In a word, my doubt necessarily implies a positing of existence of the type: a man coming towards me. On the contrary, to say ‘I have an image of Pierre’ is equivalent to saying not only ‘I do not see Pierre’, but also ‘I do not see anything at all’. The characteristic of the intentional object of the imaging consciousness is that the object is not there and is posited as such, or that it does not exist and is posited as nonexistent, or that it is not posited at all.

To produce in me the image consciousness of Pierre is to make an intentional synthesis that gathers in itself a host of past moments, which assert the identity of Pierre across these diverse appearances and which give this same object under a certain aspect (in profile, in three-quarters, full size, head and shoulders, etc.). This aspect is necessarily an intuitive aspect: what my present intention aims at is Pierre in his corporeality, the Pierre that I can see, touch, hear, were I to see him, touch him, hear him. It is a body that is necessarily at a certain distance from mine, necessarily in a certain position in relation to me. Only, the Pierre that I could touch I posit at present as not being touched by me. My image of him is a certain manner of not touching him, not seeing him, a way he has of not being at such a distance, in such a position. The belief, in the image, posits the intuition, but does not posit Pierre. The characteristic of Pierre is not to be non-intuitive, as one might be tempted to believe, but to be ‘intuitive-absent’, given as absent to intuition. In this sense, one can say that the image has wrapped within it a certain nothingness. Its object is not a simple portrait, it asserts itself: but in asserting itself it destroys itself. However lively, appealing, strong the image, it gives its object as not being. This does not preclude our then reacting to this image as if its object were present, before us: we will see that it can happen that we try, with all our being, to react to an image as if it were a perception. But the ambiguous and false state at which we thus arrive only throws into relief what has just been said: in vain we seek by our conduct towards the object to give rise to the belief that it really exists; we can ignore for a second, but cannot destroy the immediate consciousness of its nothingness.

V. FOURTH CHARACTERISTIC: SPONTANEITY

The imaging consciousness of the object includes, as we noted above, a nonthetic consciousness of itself. This consciousness, which one could call transversal, has no object. It posits nothing, refers to nothing, is not knowledge (connaissance): it is a diffuse light that consciousness emits for itself, or – to abandon comparisons – it is an indefinable quality that attaches itself to every consciousness. A perceptual consciousness appears to itself as passive. On the other hand, an imaging consciousness gives itself to itself as an imaging consciousness, which is to say as a spontaneity that produces and conserves the object as imaged. It is a kind of indefinable counterpart to the fact that the object gives itself as a nothingness. The consciousness appears to itself as creative, but without positing as object this creative character. It is thanks to this vague and fugitive quality that the image consciousness is not given as a piece of wood that floats on the sea, but as a wave among the waves. It feels itself to be consciousness through and through and homogeneous with the other consciousnesses that have preceded it and with which it is synthetically united.

VI. CONCLUSION

There remains much more that we can know with certainty concerning images. But it will be necessary, for that, to place the mental image in the midst of phenomena having a similar structure and to attempt a comparative description. Simple reflection, it seems to us, has delivered all that it can. It informed us about what one could call the statics of the image, about the image considered as an isolated phenomenon.

We cannot ignore the importance of this information. If we try to group it and order it, it appears to us initially that the image is not a state, a solid and opaque residue, but a consciousness. The majority of psychologists think that they find the image in taking a cross-section through the current of consciousness. For them, the image is an element in an instantaneous synthesis, and each consciousness includes or can include one or more images; to study the role of the image in thought is to seek the place of the image among the collection of objects that constitute the present consciousness; it is in this sense that they can speak of a thought that is supported by images. We now know that we must renounce these spatial metaphors. The image is a sui generis consciousness that cannot in any way form part of a larger consciousness. There is no image in a consciousness that would contain it, in addition to the thought, signs, feelings, sensations. Rather, the image consciousness is a synthetic form that appears as a certain moment of a temporal synthesis and organizes itself with the other forms of consciousness, which precede and follow it to form a melodic unity. To say that an object is given as imaged and as conceived at the same time is as absurd as to speak of a body that would be solid and gas at the same time.

This imaging consciousness may be called representative in the sense that it will seek its object on the ground of perception and aims at the sensitive elements that constitute that object. At the same time, the imaging consciousness orients itself in relation to its object as the perceptual consciousness in relation to the perceived object. In addition, it is spontaneous and creative; it supports, maintains by continuous creation, the sensible qualities of its object. In perception, the actual representative element corresponds to a passivity of consciousness. In the image, that element, in so far as it is primary and incommunicable, is the product of a conscious activity, is shot through with a flow of creative will. It follows necessarily that the object as imaged is never anything more than the consciousness one has of it. That is what I have called the phenomenon of quasi-observation. To have vague consciousness of an image is to have consciousness of a vague image. We are here a long way from Berkeley and Hume, who declared general images, indeterminate images, impossible. But we agree fully with the subjects of Watt and Messer.

‘I saw’, said subject I, ‘something that looked like a wing’. Subject II saw a face without knowing whether it was that of a man or a woman. Subject I had ‘an approximate image of a human face; a typical, not individual, image’.¹²

Berkeley’s error was to prescribe for the image conditions that apply only to perception. A hare vaguely perceived is in itself a determinate hare. But a hare that is the object of a vague image is an indeterminate hare.

The final consequence of the preceding is that the flesh of the object is not the same in the image as in perception. By ‘flesh’ I understand the intimate texture. The classical authors gave us the image as a less vivid perception, less clear but in all other respects like it in the flesh. We now know that this is a mistake. The object of perception is constituted by an infinite multiplicity of determinations and possible relations. On the other hand, the most determinate image possesses in itself only a finite number of determinations, precisely those of which we are conscious. These determinations can remain unrelated to one another if we are not conscious that they support relations between them. Hence the discontinuity at the very heart of the object of the image, something halting, qualities that spring towards existence and stop halfway, an essential poverty.

We still have much to learn. The relation between the image and its object, for example, remains very obscure. We have said that the image is consciousness of an object. The object of the image of Pierre, we have said, is the Pierre of flesh and blood, who is currently in Berlin. But, on the other hand, the image that I presently have of Pierre shows him at home, in his room in Paris, seated on a chair that I know well. Then, one could ask, is the object of the image the Pierre who currently lives in Berlin, or the Pierre who lived last year in Paris? And if we persist in affirming that it is the Pierre who lives in Berlin, we must explain the paradox: why and how does the imaged consciousness aim at the Pierre of Berlin through the Pierre who lived last year in Paris?

But we know so far only the statics of the image; we cannot at once form a theory of the relation of the image to its object: it is necessary first to describe the image as a functional attitude.

2
THE IMAGE FAMILY

We have described certain forms of consciousness called images. But we do not know where the class of images begins or ends. For example, in the external world there are objects that are also called images (portraits, reflections in a mirror, imitations, etc.). Is this a simple homonymy, or is it that the attitude of our consciousness in front of these objects is comparable to that which it takes in the phenomenon of ‘mental image’? On the latter hypothesis it is necessary to expand considerably the notion of the image, in order that it range over a number of consciousnesses that have not occupied us up to now.

I. IMAGE, PORTRAIT, CARICATURE

I want to remember the face of my friend Pierre. I make an effort and I produce a certain imaged consciousness of Pierre. The object is very imperfectly attained: some details are lacking, others are suspect, the whole is rather blurred. There is a certain feeling of sympathy and charm, which I wanted to restore to this face and which did not return. I do not renounce my project, I get up and take a photograph from a drawer. It is an excellent portrait of Pierre, it gives me all the details of his face, some of which had escaped me. But the photo lacks life: it gives perfectly the external characteristics of Pierre’s face; it does not capture his expression. Fortunately I possess a caricature that a skilful artist made of him. This time the relations between the parts of the face are deliberately distorted, the nose is much too long, the cheeks are too prominent, etc. Nevertheless, something that was lacking in the photograph, life, expression, is clearly manifest in the drawing: I ‘regain’ Pierre.

Mental representation, photography, caricature: these three very different realities appear, in our example, as three stages of the same process, three moments of a unique act. From beginning to end, the aim is the same: to make present the face of Pierre, who is not there. Even so, it is only the subjective representation that bears, in psychology, the name of image. Is this quite right?

Let us examine our example more deeply. We have employed three procedures to give ourselves the face of Pierre. In the three cases we found an ‘intention’, and that intention aims, in the three cases, at the same object. This object is neither the representation, nor the photo, nor the caricature: it is my friend Pierre. Moreover, in the three cases, I aim at the object in the same way: it is on the ground of perception that I want to make the face of Pierre appear, I want to ‘make it present’ to me. And, as I cannot make a direct perception of him spring up, I make use of a certain matter that acts as an analogon, as an equivalent of perception.

In two cases, at least, the matter can be perceived for itself: it is not part of its own nature that it must function as matter for an image. The photo, taken in itself, is a thing: I can try to determine from its colour the duration of its exposure, the products used to tone it and fix it, etc.; the caricature is a thing, I can please myself by studying the lines and the colours, without thinking that these lines and these colours have the function of representing something.

The matter of the mental image is more difficult to determine. Can it exist outside the intention? We will consider this problem later. But in any case, it is evident that we should find here too a matter and that this matter gets its meaning only from the intention that animates it. To give an account of this, it is enough to compare my initial empty intention with my mental image of Pierre. Initially I wanted to represent Pierre to myself out of the void, and then something emerged, which came to fulfil my intention. The three cases are therefore strictly parallel. They are three situations that have the same form, but in them the matter varies. From these variations in matter there naturally follow internal differences that we must describe and that, without doubt, extend as far as the structure of the intention. But our first concern is with intentions of the same class, the same type, and whose matter is functionally identical.

We may be reproached for loading the dice by choosing a voluntarily produced representation as an example of a mental image. In most cases, no doubt, the image springs from a deep spontaneity that cannot be assimilated to the will. It seems that the involuntary image appears to consciousness as my friend Pierre might appear to me from around the corner in a street.

In fact, we are here again victims of the illusion of immanence. It is true that, in the case of what is improperly called ‘involuntary evocation’, the image is constituted outside consciousness and then appears to it once constituted. But involuntary and voluntary images represent two very closely related types of consciousness, of which one is produced by a voluntary spontaneity and the other by a spontaneity without will. One must in no way confuse intention, in our sense of the term, and will. To say that there can be an image without will in no way implies that there can be an image without intention. In my opinion, it is not only the mental image that needs an intention to constitute it: an external object functioning as an image cannot exercise that function without an intention that interprets it as such. If someone suddenly shows me a photo of Pierre, the case is functionally the same as when an image appears in my consciousness suddenly and without being willed. However this photograph, if it is simply perceived, appears to me as a paper rectangle of a special quality and colour, with shades and clear spots distributed in a certain way. If I perceive that photograph as ‘photo of a man standing on steps’, the mental phenomenon is necessarily already of a different structure: a different intention animates it. And if that photo appears to me as the photo ‘of Pierre’, if, in some way, I see Pierre behind it, it is necessary that the piece of card is animated with some help from me, giving it a meaning it did not yet have. If I see Pierre in the photo, it is because I put him there. And how could I have put him there if not by a particular intention? And if this intention is necessary, what does it matter whether the image was presented unexpectedly or voluntarily sought? At most one can suppose, in thefirst case, a slight lag between the presentation of the photograph and the apprehension of it as an image. We can imagine three successive stages of apprehension: photo, photo of a man standing on steps, photo of Pierre. But it also happens that the three stages occur so closely to one another as to make just one; it happens that the photo does not function as an object but gives itself immediately as an image.

We could repeat this demonstration in the case of the mental image. It could indeed appear without being willed: it nonetheless requires a certain intention, precisely that which constitutes it as image. However, we must mention one crucial difference: a photo functions at first as an object (at least theoretically). A mental image gives itself immediately as an image. This is because the existence of a psychic phenomenon and the meaning that it has for consciousness are one.¹³ Mental images, caricatures, photos are so many species of the same genus, and from now on we can try to determine what it is that they have in common.

These various cases all act to ‘make present’ an object. This object is not there, and we know that it is not there. We therefore find, in the first place, an intention directed at an absent object. But this intention is not empty: it directs itself through a content, which is not just any content, but which, in itself, must present some analogy with the object in question. For example, if I want to represent to myself the face of Pierre, I must direct my attention through some determined objects, and not through my pen or that sugar lump. The apprehension of these objects occurs in the form of images, which is to say they lose their own sense to acquire another. Instead of existing for themselves, in a free state, they are integrated into a new form.¹⁴ The intention makes use of it only as a means of evoking its object, just as one uses séance tables to evoke spirits. They serve as representatives of the absent object, without managing however to suspend that characteristic of the objects of an imaging consciousness: absence.

In the preceding description, we have supposed that the object is not there and that we posit its absence. One could also posit its nonexistence. Behind their physical representation, which is Dürer’s engraving, the Knight and Death are surely objects for me. But these are objects of which, this time, I posit not absence but nonexistence. This new class of objects, for which we reserve the name of fictions, includes classes parallel to those that we have just considered: engraving, caricature, mental image.

I will say in consequence that the image is an act that aims in its corporeality at an absent or nonexistent object, through a physical or psychic content that is given not as itself but in the capacity of ‘analogical representative’ of the object aimed at. The specifications will be made according to the matter, since the informing intention remains identical. I therefore distinguish images whose matter is borrowed from the world of things (illustrations, photos, caricatures, actors’ imitations, etc.) from those whose matter is borrowed from the mental world (consciousness of movements, feelings, etc.). There exist intermediate types that present us with syntheses of external elements and psychic elements, as when we see a face in the flame, in the arabesques of a tapestry, or in the case of hypnagogic images, which are constructed, as we will see, on the basis of entoptic lights.

One could not study the mental image separately. There is not a world of images and a world of objects. Rather every object, whether it is presented by external perception or it appears to inner sense, is susceptible to functioning as a present reality or as an image, depending on the centre of reference that has been chosen. The two worlds, the imaginary and the real, are constituted by the same objects; only the grouping and the interpretation of these objects varies. What defines the imaginary world, as with the real universe, is an attitude of consciousness. We will therefore study successively the following consciousnesses: looking at a portrait of Pierre, a schematic drawing, a music-hall singer impersonating Maurice Chevalier, seeing a face in the flame, ‘having’ a hypnagogic image, ‘having’ a mental image. Thus rising from the image that draws its matter in perception to that which takes it among the objects of inner sense, we will be able to describe and fix, through its variations, one of the two great functions of consciousness: the ‘image’ function, or imagination.

II. SIGN AND PORTRAIT

I look at the portrait of Pierre. Through the photo, I aim at Pierre in his physical individuality. The photo is no longer a concrete object that provides me with perception: it serves as matter for the image.

But here, it seems, is a phenomenon of the same nature: I approach these large black lines printed on a placard nailed above a door of the station. These black lines suddenly cease to have their own dimensions, colour, place: they now constitute the words ‘Assistant Manager’s Office’. I read the words on the placard and I now know that I must go in here to make my claim: one says that I understood, ‘deciphered’, the words. This is not absolutely accurate: it would be better to say that I created them out of these black lines. These lines are no longer important to me, I no longer perceive them: actually, I have taken a certain attitude of consciousness that aims at another object through them. That object is the office where I have business. It is not present, but, thanks to the inscription, it does not escape me entirely: I situate it, I have knowledge concerning it. The matter at which I direct my intention, transformed by this intention, now forms an integral part of my current attitude; it is the matter of my act, it is a sign. In the case of the sign, as in that of the image, we have an intention that aims at an object, a matter that it transforms, an object aimed at that is not present. At first glance it might seem that we are dealing with the same function. It is to be noticed, moreover, that classical psychology often confuses sign and image. When Hume tells us that the relation between the image and its object is extrinsic, he makes the image a sign.¹⁵ But, conversely, when one makes a word such as it appears in inner language a mental image, one reduces the function of the sign to that of the image. We will see later that a word of inner language is not, as a psychology based on hasty introspections believed, the mental image of a printed word, but is in itself and directly a sign. For now, we have to study only the relations between the physical sign and the physical image. Do they belong to the same class?

(1) The matter of the sign is completely indifferent to the object signified. There is no relation at all between ‘Office’, black lines on a white page, and the complex object ‘office’ that is not just physical, but social. The origin of the association is convention; subsequently, it is reinforced by habit. Without habit, which motivates a certain attitude of consciousness as soon as the word is perceived, the word ‘office’ would never evoke its object.

Between the matter of the physical image and its object there is a very different relation: they resemble each other. What should we understand by this?

The matter of our image, when we look at a portrait, is not only that tangle of lines and colours that I just called it in the interest of simplicity. It is, actually, a quasi-person, with a quasi-face etc. At the museum in Rouen, suddenly entering an unfamiliar room, I happened to take the people in a large picture for actual men. The illusion was of very short duration – a quarter of a second, perhaps – it remains nonetheless that I did not have, during this negligible lapse of time, an imaged consciousness, but on the contrary, a perceptual consciousness. Without doubt, the synthesis was poorly made and the perception false, but that false perception was nonetheless a perception. It is the case that, in the picture, there is the appearance of a man. If I approach it, the illusion disappears, but the cause of the illusion persists: the picture, made to resemble a human being, acts on me as would a man, whatever attitude of consciousness I took towards it in other respects; this knitting of the brows, on the canvas, directly moves me, because the cleverly prepared synthesis ‘brows’ is itself carried out even before I make these brows ‘image brows’ or real brows; the composure of this figure moves me directly whatever interpretation I may give it. In brief, these elements in themselves are neutral; they can enter into a synthesis of imagination or of perception. But although they are neutral, they are expressive. If I decide to continue to perceive it, if I look at the painting purely aesthetically, if I consider the relations between the colours, the form, the brush strokes, if I study the purely technical procedures of the painter, the expressive value does not disappear for all that; the person in the painting solicits me gently to take him for a man. Likewise, if I know (connais) the subject of the portrait, the portrait will have, before any interpretation, a real force, a resemblance.

The mistake here would be to believe that this resemblance causes the mental image of Pierre to reappear in my mind. This would fall to the objection that James made against the associationists. The resemblance between A and B, he said, cannot act as a force that would bring B into consciousness if A is given. To perceive the resemblance between A and B, indeed, it is necessary that B is given at the same time as A.

The resemblance of which we speak therefore is not a force that tends to evoke the mental image of Pierre. But the portrait has a tendency to give itself as Pierre in person. The portrait acts upon us – almost – like Pierre in person and, because of this fact, it solicits us to make the perceptual synthesis: Pierre offlesh and blood.

Presently my intention appears; I say: ‘This is the portrait of Pierre’ or, more briefly: ‘This is Pierre’. Then the portrait ceases to be an object, it functions as matter for an image. This invitation to perceive Pierre has not disappeared, but has entered into the imagined synthesis. To tell the truth, it is the invitation that functions as an analogon and it is through it that my intention is directed at Pierre. I say to myself: ‘Look, it’s true, Pierre is like that, he has these brows, this smile.’ All that I perceive enters into a projective synthesis that aims at the true Pierre, a living being who is not there.

(2) In signification, a word is but a milestone: it presents itself, awakens a signification, and that signification never returns to it but goes to the thing and drops the word. In the case of the image with a physical base, on the contrary, intentionality constantly returns to the image-portrait. We place ourselves facing the portrait and we observe it;¹⁶ the imaging consciousness of Pierre is constantly enriched; new details are constantly added to the object: that wrinkle that I had not noticed on Pierre, I allot it to him as soon as I see it on his portrait. Each detail is perceived, but not for itself, not as a spot of colour on a canvas: it straight away incorporates itself in the object, which is to say in Pierre.

(3) These reflections bring us to pose the question of the relation of the image and the sign to their objects. For the sign, the object is clear: the sign consciousness as such is not positional. When accompanied by an affirmation, this affirmation is synthetically attached to it and we have a new consciousness: judgement. But to read on a placard ‘Assistant Manager’s Office’ is to posit nothing. In every image, even in the one that does not posit its object as existent, there is a positional determination. In the sign as such this determination is lacking. From an object which functions as sign, a certain something is aimed at; but, of that something, one affirms nothing, one limits oneself to aiming at it. Naturally, this something is not manifest through the signifying matter: it is wholly beyond it.

In the image-portrait, the question is much more complicated: Pierre, on the one hand, can be far from his portrait (if it is a historical portrait, the subject is perhaps dead); but it is exactly this ‘object far from us’ that we aim at. But, on the other hand, all the physical qualities are there, before us. The object is posited as absent, but the impression is present. There is here an irrational synthesis that is difficult to explain. I look, for example, at a portrait of Charles VIII at the Uffizi in Florence. I know that it is Charles VIII, who is dead. It is this that gives my present attitude its sense. But, on the other hand, those sinuous and sensual lips, that narrow, stubborn forehead, directly provoke in me a certain affective impression, and that impression directs itself to these lips, as they are in the picture. So these lips simultaneously have a double function: on the one hand they refer to the real lips, long since turned to dust, and derive their meaning only from them; but, on the other hand, they act directly on my sensibility, because they are a trompe-l’oeil, because the coloured spots on the picture give themselves to the eyes as a forehead, as lips. Finally the two functions merge, and we have the imaged state: the dead Charles VIII is there, present before us. It is he that we see, not the picture, and yet we posit him as not being there: we have only reached him ‘as imaged’, ‘by the intermediary’ of the picture. One sees that the relation that consciousness posits in the imaging attitude between the portrait and its subject is magical. Charles VIII is at one and the same time over there in the past and here. Here, in a state of reduced life, with a mass of determinations missing (relief, mobility, sometimes colour, etc.) and as relative. Over there, as absolute. We do not think, in our unreflective consciousness, that a painter made that portrait etc. The first bond posited between image and model is a bond of emanation. The subject has ontological primacy. But he incarnates himself, he descends into the image. This explains the attitudes of primitive people towards their portraits and certain practices of black magic (the effigy of wax pierced with a pin, the wounded bison painted on the walls to make the hunt more fruitful). It is not a question, moreover, of a way of thinking that has disappeared today. The structure of the image remained, with us, irrational and, here as almost everywhere, we are restricted to making rational constructions on pre-logical bases.

(4) This leads us to make the final and most significant distinction between sign and image. I think, let us say, of Pierre in the picture. This means that I do not think of the picture at all: I think of Pierre. One should not therefore believe that I think of the picture ‘as an image of Pierre’. This is a reflective consciousness that reveals the function of the picture in my present consciousness. For that reflective consciousness, Pierre and the picture are two distinct objects. But in the imaging attitude, the picture is nothing but a way for Pierre to appear to me as absent. So the picture gives Pierre, though Pierre is not there. The sign, on the contrary, does not give its object. It is constituted as a sign by an empty intention. It follows that a sign consciousness, which is empty by nature, can be fulfilled without destroying itself. I see Pierre, and someone says: ‘It’s Pierre’; I join the Pierre sign to the Pierre perception by a synthetic act. The signification is fulfilled. The image consciousness is already full in its own way. If Pierre appears in person, it disappears.

We should not, however, imagine that it is enough that the object of a photograph exists for consciousness to posit it as such. We know that there exists a type of imaging consciousness where the object is not posited as existent; another where the object is posited as nonexistent. The preceding descriptions could be repeated for these different types without large alterations. Only the positional character of consciousness is altered. But it is necessary to emphasize the fact that what distinguishes the different positional types is the thetic character of the intention, and not the existence or nonexistence of the object. For example, I can very well posit a centaur as existent (but absent). On the other hand, if I look at the photos in a magazine, they can very well ‘say nothing to me’, which is to say I look at them without positing their existence. Thus, the people whose photographs I see are indeed reached through these photographs, but without my positing their existence, just as the Knight and Death are reached through Dürer’s engraving, but without my positing them.¹⁷ One could also find cases where the photo leaves me in such a state of indifference that I do not carry out any imaging. The photograph is vaguely constituted as an object, and the people that it depicts are indeed constituted as people, but solely because of their resemblance to human beings, without any particular intentionality. They float between the shores of perception, sign, and image, without touching any of them.

On the contrary, the imaging consciousness that we produce before a photograph is an act and this act includes a nonthetic consciousness of itself as spontaneity. We have consciousness, of some sort, of animating the photo, of lending life to it in order to make an image of it.

III. FROM SIGN TO IMAGE: CONSCIOUSNESS OF IMITATIONS

On the stage of a music hall, Franconay is ‘doing some imitations’; I recognize the artist she is imitating: it is Maurice Chevalier. I assess the imitation: ‘It is really him’, or else: ‘It is lacking’. What is going on in my consciousness?

Nothing other, some will say, than a connection by resemblance followed by comparison: the imitation makes the image of Maurice Chevalier arise in me; I then proceed to a comparison between the former and the latter.

This thesis is unacceptable. We are fully within the illusion of immanence. James’s objection, moreover, exerts its full weight here: what is that resemblance that goes in search of images in the unconscious, that resemblance that precedes the consciousness that one has of it?

One might try to save this thesis by making some corrections. One might abandon resemblance and try to resort to the bond of contiguity.

The name ‘Maurice Chevalier’ evokes the image in us by contiguity. This explanation will not do for the numerous cases where the artist suggests without naming. There are a large number of signs that are comparable to a name: Franconay, without naming Chevalier, can suddenly don a straw hat. Posters, newspapers, caricatures have slowly built up a whole arsenal of signs. We need only draw on it.

It is true that the imitation uses signs that are understood as such by the spectator. But the connection between sign and image, if this should be understood as an associative bond, does not exist; first, for the reason that the consciousness of imitation, which is itself an imaging consciousness, does not include a mental image. Further, the image, like the sign, is a consciousness. There is no question of an external bond between these two consciousnesses. A consciousness does not possess an opaque and unconscious surface by which it can be seized and attached to another consciousness. Between two consciousnesses, the relation of cause and effect cannot hold. A consciousness is a synthesis through and through, thoroughly intimate with itself: it is at the heart of this synthetic interiority that it can join, by an act of retention or protention, with a preceding or succeeding consciousness. Moreover, for one consciousness to act on another consciousness, it must be retained and recreated by the consciousness on which it is to act. There are never passivities, but internal assimilations and disintegrations at the heart of an intentional synthesis that is transparent to itself. One consciousness is not the cause of another consciousness: it motivates it.

This brings us to the real problem: the consciousness of imitation is a temporal form, which is to say, it develops its structures in time. It is consciousness of signification, but a special sign consciousness that knows beforehand that it is to become an image consciousness. It then becomes imaging consciousness, but an imaging consciousness that retains in itself what was essential to the sign consciousness. The synthetic unity of these consciousnesses is an act of a certain duration, in which the sign consciousness and the image consciousness are in a relation of means to end. The essential problem is now, to describe these structures, to show how the sign consciousness serves to motivate the image consciousness, how the former includes the latter in a new synthesis. How there is, at the same time, a functional transformation of the perceived object, which passes from the state of signifying matter to the state of representative matter.

The difference between the consciousness of imitation and the consciousness of a portrait comes from the difference in matter. The matter of the portrait itself solicits the spectator to effect the synthesis, because the painter has given it a perfect resemblance to the subject. The matter of the imitation is a human body. It is rigid, it resists.¹⁸ The imitator is small, stout, brunette; a woman, she imitates a man. The result is that the imitation is approximate. The object that Franconay produces by means of her body is a feeble form, which can always be interpreted in two distinct ways: I am always free to see Maurice Chevalier as imaged, or a small woman pulling faces. From this follows the essential role of signs: they must enlighten and guide consciousness.

The first orientation of consciousness is toward the general situation: it is disposed to interpret everything as an imitation. But it remains empty, it is merely a question (who will be imitated?), a directed attention. From the outset, it is directed, through the imitator, at an unspecified person, conceived as the object X of the imitation.¹⁹ The instruction that it gives itself is double: it must determine the object X from the signs furnished by the imitator; it must realize the object as imaged through the person that is imitating.

The artist appears. She is wearing a straw hat; she protrudes her lower lip, she tilts her head forward. I cease to perceive, I read, which is to say, I effect a signifying synthesis. The boater is at first a simple sign, just as the cap and scarf of the chanteur réaliste are signs that he is about to sing a ruffian song. That is to say that, at first, I do not perceive the hat of Chevalier through the straw hat, but the imitator’s hat refers to Chevalier, as the cap refers to the ‘ruffian milieu’. To decipher the signs is to produce the concept ‘Chevalier’. At the same time I judge: ‘She is imitating Chevalier’. With this judgement the structure of consciousness is transformed. The theme now is Chevalier. By its central intention, the consciousness is imaging, it acts to realize my knowledge in the intuitive matter that is furnished for me.

This intuitive matter is very poor; the imitation reproduces only a few elements that are, moreover, the least intuitive in intuition: they are the relations, such as the angle of the boater on the ears, the angle formed by the neck and the chin. In addition, some of the relations are deliberately altered: one exaggerates the angle of the hat, because this is the principal sign that must strike us first, around which all the others are ordered. Whereas the portrait accurately renders its model in all its complexity and, with the picture as with life, one must make an effort of simplification to extract the characteristic features, in the imitation it is the characteristic as such that is initially given. A portrait is in some respects – at least in appearance – nature without people. An imitation is already a studied model, reduced to recipes, to schemas. It is with these technical recipes that consciousness slips into an imaged intuition. Let us add that these schemas – so dry, so abstract that a few moments ago they could be read like signs – are engulfed in a mass of details that seem to oppose this intuition. How is Maurice Chevalier to be found through these fat and painted cheeks, this black hair, this female body, these female clothes?

We should recall a celebrated passage of Matter and Memory:

A priori … we may expect the clear distinction of individual objects to be a luxury of perception … It would seem, then, that we start neither from the perception of the individual nor from the conception of the genus, but from an intermediate knowledge, from a confused sense of the striking quality or of resemblance…²⁰

That black hair, we did not see as black; that body, we did not perceive as a female body, we did not see those prominent curves. However, as it is a question of descending to the intuitive level, we use their sensible content in its most general features. The hair, the body are perceived as indefinite masses, as filled spaces. They have sensible opacity; otherwise, they are only a setting. So, for the first time in our description of imaging consciousnesses, we see appearing – and this at the very heart of perception – a fundamental indeterminacy. We must remember this when, later on, we study mental images. These qualities that are so vague, and that are perceived only in so far as they are general, are not valued for themselves: one incorporates them into the imaged synthesis. They represent the indeterminate body, the indeterminate hair, of Maurice Chevalier.

These are not enough: we must realize positive determinations. It is not a question of constituting a perfect analogon of Chevalier’s body from Franconay’s body. I use only a few elements that functioned, until now, as signs. In the absence of a complete equivalent of the person imitated, I must realize in intuition a certain expressive nature, something like the essence of Chevalier delivered to intuition.

I must first lend life to these dry schemas. But let us take care: if I perceive them for themselves, if I note the junctures of the lips, the colour of the straw boater, the image consciousness vanishes. I must execute the movement of the perception backwards, start with knowledge and, according to the knowledge, determine the intuition. That lip was formerly a sign: I made it into an image. But it is an image only to the degree to which it was a sign. I see it only as‘large protruding lip’. We find here an essential characteristic of the mental image: the phenomenon of quasi-observation. What I perceive is what I know; the object can teach nothing, and the intuition is only coarse, degraded knowledge. At the same time, these segregated islets are reunited by vague intuitive zones: the cheeks, the ears, the neck of the actor function as an indeterminate connective tissue. Here again, knowledge is primary: what is perceived corresponds to the vague knowledge that Maurice Chevalier has cheeks, ears, a neck. The details vanish, what cannot disappear resists the imaged synthesis.

But these different elements of intuition are not enough to realize the ‘expressive nature’ of which I spoke. Here a new factor appears: affectivity.

Let us posit two principles:

(1) All perception is accompanied by an affective reaction.²¹

(2) Every feeling is feeling about something, which is to say it aims at its object in a certain manner and projects onto it a certain quality. To like Pierre is to be conscious of Pierre as likeable.

We can now understand the role of affectivity in the consciousness of imitation. When I see Maurice Chevalier, this perception includes a certain affective reaction. It projects on the physiognomy of Maurice Chevalier a certain indefinable quality that we can call his ‘sense’. In the consciousness of imitation, the intended knowledge, starting from signs and the beginnings of intuitive realization, awakens this emotional reaction that comes to be incorporated in the intentional synthesis. Correlatively, the affective sense of the face of Chevalier will appear on the face of Franconay. It is this that realizes the synthetic union of the different signs, it is this that animates their fixed dryness, that gives them life and a certain depth. It is this that, giving to the isolated elements of the imitation an indefinable sense and the unity of an object, can pass for the true intuitive matter of the consciousness of imitation. Finally, it is this object as imaged that we see on the body of the imitator: the signs united by an affective sense, which is to say the expressive nature. This is the first time, but not the last, that we see affectivity substitute itself for the intuitive elements peculiar to perception in order to realize the object as imaged.

The imaged synthesis is accompanied by a very strong consciousness of spontaneity, of freedom one might say. This is ultimately because only a formal will can prevent consciousness from slipping from the level of the image to that of perception. In most cases this slipping occurs all the same, from time to time. It quite often happens that the synthesis is not entirely made: the face and the body of the imitator do not lose all their individuality; yet the expressive nature ‘Maurice Chevalier’ nevertheless appears on that face, on that female body. A hybrid state follows, neither fully perception nor fully image, which should be described for itself. These states without equilibrium and that do not endure are evidently, for the spectator, what is most pleasant in the imitation. It is indeed that the relation of the object to the matter of the imitation is here a relation of possession. The absent Maurice Chevalier chooses, in order to manifest himself, the body of a woman.

So, primitively, an imitator is one possessed.²² Perhaps this is the way that the role of imitation in the ritual dances of primitive peoples should be explained.

IV. FROM SIGN TO IMAGE: SCHEMATIC DRAWINGS

The image, said Husserl, is a ‘fulfilment’ (Erfüllung) of signification. The study of imitation rather gave us to believe that the image is a degraded signification, descended to the plane of intuition. It is not a fulfilment: it is a change of nature. The study of consciousnesses of schematic drawings will confirm us in this opinion. In those, indeed, the intuitive element is considerably reduced, and the role of conscious activity increases in importance: what constitutes the image and compensates for all the failures of perception is the intention.

The schematic drawing is constituted by schemas. Caricaturists, for example, can represent a man by means of some black lines without depth: one black point for the head, two lines for the arms, one for the chest, two for the legs. It is characteristic of the schema that it is intermediate between the image and the sign. Its matter demands to be deciphered. It aims only to present relations. By itself it is nothing. Many are indecipherable if one does not know (connaît) the system of conventions that is the key; most require an intelligent interpretation; they have no genuine resemblance to the object they represent. Nevertheless they are not signs because they are not considered as such. In these few black lines I intend a man who is running. The

knowledge aims at the image, but is not itself an image: it slips into the schema and takes the form of intuition. Only the knowledge (savoir) does not just involve knowledge (connaissance) of the qualities that are directly represented in the schema. It also comprises, in an undifferentiated mass, all sorts of intentions concerning the diverse physical qualities that the content could possess, including colour, facial features, sometimes even expression. These intentions remain undifferentiated as they reach the schematic figure, but they are realized intuitively on it. Through these black lines we aim not just at a silhouette, we aim at a complete man, we concentrate in them all his qualities without differentiation: the schema is full (rempli) to bursting. To tell the truth, these qualities are not represented: in the proper sense, the black features do not represent anything but some relations of structure and attitude. But it is enough of a rudiment of representation for all the knowledge to be weighed down there, thus giving a kind of depth to this flat figure. Draw a little man on bended knees with arms raised in the air: you will project on his face an indignant amazement. But you will not see it there: it is there in a latent state, like an electric charge.

The majority of schematic drawings are read in a definite sense. Eye movements organize the perception, carve out the spatial environment, determine the fields of force, transform the lines into vectors. Consider, for example, the schema of a face. I could see simple lines there: three segments that meet at point O; a second point below O, a little to the right, then an insignificant line. In that case I let the lines organize themselves according to the laws of form studied by Köhler and Wertheimer. The white sheet serves as the homogeneous ground, the three segments are organized as a fork. My eyes ascend from N to O, and there the movement is widened while continuing on the two divergent lines at once. The isolated point below O comes to adhere to the figure. On the other hand, the sinuous line that I traced below remains isolated and forms another figure.²³

Now I read the figure entirely differently: I see a face in it. Of the three segments, the one that rises obliquely is interpreted as the contour of the forehead, the segment to the right is an eyebrow, the descending segment is the line of the nose. The isolated point represents the eye, the sinuous line forms the mouth and the chin. What occurred? There was, first of all, a radical change in intention. I will not describe that change here, we know it well: the perceptual intention becomes an imaged one. But this would not be enough: the figure must let itself be interpreted. It is necessary, finally and especially, that my body adopts a certain attitude, plays a certain mime to animate this ensemble of lines. First of all, the white paper on both sides of the figure totally changes sense. The space to the right of the lines is coupled with the figure so that the lines appear to mark the limit of it: that is, my eyes behold some amount of white space, to the right of the figure, but without positing it as paper. To tell the truth, neither do I think of it as the flesh of a face, but rather as volume, as density, filled (rempli) space. At the same time, the movement of my eyes, which began, without much precision, to the right of the figure, a little behind the eyebrow, at the level of the tip of the nose, stops abruptly at the lines ONM, which function, due to this fact, as the limits of an indeterminate solid region. On the other hand, the part of the white paper that is situated to the left of the figure functions as empty space: I refuse to take it into account. No doubt, I cannot prevent myself from seeing it when I let my eyes run over the black lines of the figure. But I do not see it for itself. In fact, in my perception itself, it functions as ground, since, in effect, it is perceived in addition at the moment when my look attaches itself to the lines conceived as contours. Thus the homogeneous space of the sheet became a solid on the right, a void on the left. At the same time, each line is deciphered for itself, by determinate movements of the eyes. For example, the nose is ‘read’ from top to bottom starting from the eyebrow (because our natural attitude towards a nose is to make out ‘its root’ and ‘its tip’; consequently, to think of it as oriented from top to bottom). At the same time we must supply an absent line: the one that joins N to the sinuous line. It is a question of constituting only one figure with these two separate groups of lines. For this we carry our eyes from N to D: we enact the absent line, we mimic it with our body. At the same time we proceed to an intentional synthesis from N and from D, which is to say we retain N in our successive consciousnesses, as we retain the different moments of the flight of a bird, so that, arriving at D, we organize N with D as the terminus a quo with the terminus ad quem. Naturally, there are many other remarks we could make, but this will suffice.

Let us take, by contrast, another schematic figure that represents a person in profile by means of lines almost like those in the preceding drawing: the right and left spaces are joined to form an empty ground and, by contrast, these lines without depth cease to be limits: they take on density, depth; I make out in each line a right contour and a left contour. At the same time (at least, in what concerns me), the figure is deciphered from bottom to top etc.

These descriptions can and must be remade by each reader. The interpretation of a schematic figure depends on knowledge, and knowledge varies from one individual to another. But the conclusions remain the same in every case and they alone interest us. In every case, indeed, we meet this very distinctive phenomenon: knowledge that enacts a symbolic mime and a mime that is hypostatized, projected onto the object. It is this phenomenon, which we will find in a slightly different form in the case of the mental image, that should be properly understood. It will deliver to us, later, the solution to many problems.

Let us begin with perception. Here is a table, which is to say a dense, consistent form, a solid object. I can move my eyes from left to right or from right to left, without causing any changes. Likewise, if I contemplate the portrait of Descartes by Frans Hals, I can look at the lips of the philosopher starting from the corner or, on the contrary, going from the middle of the mouth towards the corners: the resemblance that they have with real lips will not be altered. In these clear-cut cases, we distinguish clearly the form of the object perceived and the movement of our eyes. No doubt, in most cases, to observe a form we must move our eyeballs and follow the contours with our eyes. But it matters little whether the movement is made in one way or another, stopped, resumed; facing the object, which is given as an unalterable whole, our eye movements are given as an infinity of possible and equivalent pathways.

This does not mean that an eye movement leaves the perception unaltered. When I shift my eyes, the relation between the object and the retinas is modified. Any movement being relative, there is no sign in the object that permits us to determine if it is the object that shifts relative to our eyes or our eyes that shift relative to the object. There are, moreover, borderline cases where we can be confused. But, most of the time, we are not deceived: first, it is not just the object that shifts, it is accompanied by everything that surrounds it; next, the eye movements are accompanied by internal sensations (we feel the rolling of our eyeballs in their orbits); they are given, finally, if not as the product of the will, at least as that of a psychic spontaneity. It remains nonetheless that knowledge, a very special intention, one might almost say a decision, is needed to refer the movement to our bodies and immobilize the objects before us. This decision, of course, is not something that we would have learned, or that we bring into play at each instant. It appears when we take the perceptual attitude in the face of the world around us and it is constitutive of that attitude (with a certain number of other intentions that we need not enumerate here). In itself, one might say, the relation between the object and the retinas is neutral: it is a relation of position that leaves unanswered the question of the real subject of movement.

Now, in the world of perceptions itself, some forms impose definite eye movements on us, either because their very structure requires of us certain motor reactions, or in consequence of habits formed and indissolubly related to these forms. In such cases, the impression of spontaneity that accompanies the shifting of the eyeballs disappears entirely. The figure, being presented in the form of a rule for our movements, makes a new grouping of the data of perception: we constitute new objects, to which we refer the change as one of their qualities. In the Müller-Lyer illusion, for example, the eye movements come to butt against the closed angles A' and B'; on the other hand, the open angles A and B allow it to continue infinitely. The contrary movements are hypostatized at A'B', the favourable movements are projected at AB, and we say that AB is longer than A'B'. The observant will notice that this expression is rather inaccurate. What appears to us as longer in AB is the power of extension. AB extends upwards and downwards; on the other hand, A'B' gathers up on itself. What happens, indeed, is that we project the movement on the segments AB and A'B' and, at the same time, we maintain the immobility of the figures. These two contradictory decisions give the object a new quality: the immobile movement becomes a potential movement, a force. The segments are transformed into vectors. This simply means that our eye movements are given as irreversible. In all that, we remained on the ground of perception: we conferred on the object a new quality, and this quality we have perceived. The object thus constituted can serve as a sign (pointing arrows etc.), but never as an image, at least not as such. One sees that what modified perception, what conferred on the lines their direction, was that the movement ceased to be felt as a spontaneous production. On the contrary, it is given as caused, and we call that which causes it – which is to say the same movement projected onto the sheet and conceived as cause – the sense, the direction of the figure. It is a little like the way that we call irascibility a subject’sfits of anger projected deep into that subject and conceived as causes of their external manifestations.

We now come to schematic images. There is little real necessity in them.

They do not give rules of movement. It is the knowledge that directs motor reactions and it even happens, as in the case of the face suggested above, that it breaks the natural structure of the forms and directs a new synthesis. It follows naturally that the eye movements are given as spontaneous. It would seem impossible, consequently, to objectify them as real properties of the perceived lines. And this is not what occurs: they are objectified as imaged properties. One does not lose sight of the fact that only the figure taken as an ensemble of lines can have another structure, other directions or no direction at all. But we intend directions upon it as imaged. We make the spontaneity of eye movements enter into a much larger mental synthesis, which is given entirely as spontaneous: it is this that constitutes the sense of the figure as an hypothesis. Knowledge, facing the lines, causes the movements. These movements are effected in order to know if something will ‘come out of it’. At the same time, they are objectified in the form of a ‘hypothetical direction’ on the figure. The question is then the following: once the movements are effected, the directions posited, the figure oriented, will the image crystallize, which is to say, will it appear as a new and indestructible form, a form that, from now on, will cause the movements that fix it? If the image appears, I see the man who is running in these several black lines. But I see him as imaged, which is to say I do not lose sight of the fact that I have freely, spontaneously projected the movements on the lines as vectorial qualities. I know that I create, at each instant, the image. So that, we now see, the representative elements in the consciousness of a schematic drawing are not the lines properly so called, but the movements projected onto these lines.

This explains why we read so many things in an image whose matter is so poor. Actually, our knowledge is not directly realized on the lines that, by themselves, do not speak: it is realized via the movements. And, on the one hand, these movements, for a single line, can be multiple, so that a single line can have a multiplicity of senses and can serve as representative matter of a mass of sensible qualities of the object as imaged. On the other hand, the same movement can realize different aspects of knowledge. The line itself is but a support, a substrate.²⁴

But can one distinguish knowledge and movement? In fact, it is not that there is, on the one hand, a directing knowledge and, on the other hand, a series of movements that obey it. Rather, just as one very often discovers one’s thought by saying it, in the same way one discovers one’s knowledge by acting it; or rather it is the knowledge that, in the form of mime, becomes conscious of itself. There are not two realities, knowledge and movements: there exists but one thing, the symbolic movement; and this is what we wanted to show. The knowledge is conscious of itself, here, only in the form of image; the image consciousness is a degraded consciousness of knowledge.

V. FACES IN THE FIRE, SPOTS ON WALLS, ROCKS IN HUMAN FORM

In these cases as in the preceding, there are movements that interpret forms. But there is a considerable difference in the positional attitudes of consciousness.

When I look at a drawing, I posit in that very look a world of human intentions of which that drawing is a product. Someone drew these lines, in order to form the image of a runner. No doubt, for this image to appear, the cooperation of my consciousness is necessary. But the artist knows this, counts on it; the artist solicits this cooperation via the black lines. We must not believe that the lines are given to me first, in perception, as lines pure and simple, to be given afterwards, in the imaged attitude, as the elements of a representation. In the perception itself, the lines are given as representative. Leaf through an album of sketches: you will not necessarily grasp at a glance the sense of each line, but you will in any case know of each one that it is representative, that it stands for something and that this is the very reason for its existence. Briefly, the quality of representing is a real property of the lines, I perceive it, for the same reason as I do their dimensions and their form. But, one might say, this is simply knowledge. The cube is also knowledge: I cannot have a simultaneous intuition of its six faces. Nevertheless, when I look at that piece of shaped wood, it is indeed a cube that I perceive. All imaged consciousness produced from a drawing is therefore built on a positing of real existence, which precedes it and which motivates it on the ground of perception, though this consciousness itself can posit its object as nonexistent or simply neutralize the existential thesis.

When we interpret a spot on the tablecloth, a motif on a tapestry, we do not posit that the spot, the motif has representative properties. Really, that spot represents nothing; when I perceive it, I perceive it as a spot and that is all. So that, when I pass to the imaging attitude, the intuitive basis of my image is nothing that appeared before in perception. These images have for their matter a pure appearance, which is given as such; nothing is posited at the outset; it is a question of, as it were, an image in mid-air, without substrate. We are not so far from the mental image, where the matter has so little independence that it appears with the image and disappears with it. But in the case we are studying at the moment, we still pretend to ‘see’ the image, which is to say, borrow its matter from the world of perception. We localize this appearance; it has form and matter. In a word, the matter is not the spot, it is the spot surveyed by the eyes in a certain way. But, in the schematic drawing, a certain potentiality, a constant power of causing eye movements is incorporated in the black lines. Here, on the other hand, the movements leave no trace on the spot. As soon as they are finished the spot becomes a spot again and that is the end.

There are two eventualities: in one, we effect free eye movements without an ulterior motive and we consider the contours of the spot at our pleasure, following the order that pleases us and bringing together at random this and that part in a synthesis that nothing demands or rejects. This is what is brought about when, lying inactive during an illness, we let our eyes wander over the wall tapestry. It then happens that a known (connue) form springs from these arabesques, which is to say that, following these movements, a somewhat coherent synthesis is made under my gaze: my eyes have traced a path and this path remains traced on the tapestry. I then say: it is a man squatting, it is a bouquet, a dog. That is to say that, on this freely effected synthesis, I make an hypothesis: I confer a representative value on the oriented form that has just appeared. To tell the truth, most of the time, I do not wait until this synthesis is completed, but, suddenly, something crystallizes at the beginning of the image. ‘This is beginning like a bouquet, the top of a face, etc.’ Knowledge has been incorporated in my movements and directs them: now I know how I must finish the operation, I know what I must find.

Or a certain form stands out from the ground and causes eye movements by its structure. Actually, these are almost always what Köhler calls weak, ambiguous forms, which have an official figure and a secret figure. To discover the latter, one almost always needs first a chance eye movement (for example, in raising the head, one notices in passing a line on the wallpaper that one had only looked at from top to bottom, but this time it is traversed upwards, and the rest follows by itself). Here again, the form is only made in outline: for hardly have the face and the eye appeared, and we already know that it is a Negro. We will complete it ourselves, by reaching a harmony between the real data of perception (lines of the arabesques) and the creative spontaneity of our movements: that is to say, we will supply the nose, mouth, and chin ourselves.

Whether they freely followed one another or they were solicited by certain structures, the movements, at first deprived of sense, suddenly become symbolic systems because they incorporate some knowledge. Realized on the spot by their intermediary, the knowledge creates the image. But the movements are given as a free play and the knowledge as a gratuitous hypothesis. So one finds here a double neutralization of the thesis: the spot is not posited as having representative properties, the object of the image is not posited as existent. The image is given therefore as a pure phantom, as a game that would be realized by means of appearances.

At the basis of this consciousness there is a neutralized thesis. Replace it with a positive thesis; that is to say, confer on the spot a capacity of representation: we will then be in the presence of the hypnagogic image.

VI. HYPNAGOGIC IMAGES, SCENES AND PERSONS SEEN IN COFFEE GROUNDS, IN A CRYSTAL BALL

Evidently, hypnagogic visions are images. Leroy characterizes the attitude of consciousness towards these appearances by the words ‘watchful and passive’.²⁵ That is, it does not posit as currently existing the objects that appear to it. However, at the basis of this consciousness there is a positive thesis: if this woman who crosses my visual field when my eyes are closed does not exist, at least her image does. Something appeared to me that represented and looked just like a woman. Often even the image is given as clearer than its object could ever be.

It is extraordinary, my eye has been transformed into a coloured photographic plate and no spectacle in this world leaves me a with similar image.²⁶

When I was studying anatomy, I was rather frequently prone to a hypnagogic vision that is not rare among medical students. Lying on my bed, eyes closed, I saw with great clarity and perfect objectivity the preparation on which I had worked during the day: the resemblance seemed precise, the impression of reality and, if I dare express myself thus, of intense life that emanated from it was perhaps deeper than if I had been facing the real object.²⁷

Thus the image is given as ‘truer than nature’, in the sense in which one could say of a particularly suggestive portrait that it is truer than its model. But it is only an image. On the other hand, consciousness affirms nothing about its real nature: is this a construction from current data, an illusion, a particularly lively memory? We do not decide, when the image is present. We limit ourselves to affirming that, by whatever means it came about, this image is there before us, that it appears to us, that it is in our eyes: what one generally means by the words ‘I see’. The Goncourts, trying to be more precise, write at the beginning of the passage that we have just cited: ‘I have it in the retina.’ However, the positing of the image is not made on the plane of perception: to perceive a thing is, in fact, to put it in its place among other things. The vision in half-sleep is set apart. In general it is not localized, it is not anywhere, does not occupy any place among other objects, it simply stands out on a vague ground. In a word: one posits the representation as existing as a representation (without specifying its nature). One grants it, moreover, the features of objectivity, clarity, independence, richness, externality, which are never possessed by the mental image and which are ordinarily characteristic of perception. One does not posit its object as existent.

The hypnagogic image, however, remains on the level of quasiobservation. This has not been sufficiently demonstrated. No doubt its object is given with such vivacity that one can, for a moment, believe that one will learn its various characteristics by methodical observation. After describing the vision that I reported, Leroy regrets ‘not to have the faculty to cause at will, the day of an examination, similar visions’. He supposed therefore that he could, by fixing the image and by subjecting it to a kind of analysis, enumerate its various characteristics.

But, in fact, the object never teaches anything: it is given entire at once and does not let itself be observed. Leroy noticed after a little while that ‘the abundance of the details, the richness of the vision were illusory’. Thus one only supposes that the image is so rich; which obviously means that one does not see all these details of anatomical perception, which appear with so much force. We will see further on that Alain, in his Système des beaux-arts, challenges whoever has an image of the Panthéon in mind, to count on this image the columns of the facade. This challenge also applies to the hypnagogic images.

Moreover, these images have a ‘fantastic’ character, which prevents them from ever representing anything precisely.²⁸ The rigorous law of individuation does not apply to them.

When I had, during part of an afternoon, assiduously dissected my preparation, its aspect had changed at every moment, not only because of the work of my scalpel, but because of the modifications of lighting, my position, etc. However, in the presence of my vision, in the evening, I would have been quite unable to say, even roughly, which moment, which particular aspect it reproduced. The lighting, in particular, was always, to some extent, theoretical, extremely lively, more like the coloured plates of a beautiful atlas than the real and sometimes poor lighting of the dissection room.²⁹

Just as they escape the principle of individuation, they escape the other laws of perception: for example, the law of perspective.

Obs. XXVII – I am lying down … I see a small woman walking … she is coming towards me … she is not getting bigger as she approaches me, but the pink of her stockings is becoming more lively.³⁰

Often one cannot even draw them.

I see clearly two of the branches of the umbrella, which is nothing unusual, but the third should be hidden by the fabric and the body of the funnel, and yet I see it. However, I do not see it by transparency: there is there something that can neither be explained nor be drawn.³¹

At least, one might say, a moment’s observation is necessary, just to determine what they represent. But this is a mistake. In fact, the essential character of hypnagogic images has not been emphasized enough: they are never prior to knowledge. Rather, all of a sudden one is abruptly seized by the certitude of seeing a rose, a square, a face. Up to that point one did not take notice there: now one knows. It is regrettable that Leroy did not study his subjects from this point of view: these excellent descriptions would thereby have gained by being absolutely complete. One occasionally finds, here and there, remarks like this one:

At a certain moment, with eyes closed, I see distinctly a woman who is sawing wood: this appears all at once.³²

Or:

Little by little a certain number of light transverse lines appear: the flowers are ordered in fives, so that their higher ends are rather close to these threads. Suddenly, I see that the lines in question are strings and that the flowers have become socks that are drying; and, at once, I also see the clothes pegs that hold them on the strings.³³

In fact, according to my own observations and those of many people whom I have been able to question, it is necessary to draw a radical distinction between the way a face appears in perception and the manner in which the same face is given in the hypnagogic vision. In the former case, something appears that is then identified as a face. Alain, among many other philosophers, has shown well that judgement rectifies, organizes, and stabilizes perception.³⁴ The passage from ‘something’ to ‘this object’ has often been described in novels, especially when they are written in the first person.

‘I heard’ says Conrad, for example (I am quoting from memory), ‘muffled and irregular noises, crackings, cracklings: it was the rain.’

If we are in the habit of perceiving the object that appears, if the perception is clear and sharp (in particular, if it is visual), the interval can be considerably reduced: it remains nonetheless that consciousness must focus on the object – this focusing can be as fast as you like – and that the object is there before the focusing.

In the hypnagogic vision, this time-lag does not exist. There is no focusing. Rather, suddenly, knowledge appears, as clear as a sensory manifestation: one becomes conscious of being in the act of seeing a face. The appearance of the face is one with the certainty that it is a face. This certainty, moreover, does not include knowledge (connaissance) of the moment when the object appeared: to tell the truth, clear reflection can show that this moment is precisely when one realized that it was there. Rather, in the hypnagogic consciousness the object is posited neither as appearing nor as already having appeared: one is suddenly aware of seeing a face. It is this characteristic of the positing above all that must give the hypnagogic vision its ‘fantastic’ aspect. It is given as an abrupt manifestation and disappears in the same way.

These few remarks enable us to understand that, in half-sleep, we are dealing with imaging consciousnesses. It remains to know what their matter is; what is, at the heart of these consciousnesses, the relation of the intention to the matter. For many writers, this matter is furnished by entoptic lights.³⁵ Leroy, drawing no conclusion, cites in objection the images’ relative independence of phosphenes.³⁶ I will try to show that these objections bear only on a certain conception of the relation of the intention to the entoptic lights. But it is necessary, for that, according to my personal observations as well as according to those the authors cited in their notes, to return to a general description of the hypnagogic state.

We will start where Leroy ends and cite his excellent conclusion, which has become standard.

What characterizes the hypnagogic vision … is a modification of the total state of the subject. This is the hypnagogic state; the synthesis of representations is here different from that of the normal state; voluntary attention and voluntary action, in general, undergo here special orientation and limitation.³⁷

In this text, ‘state’ seems to me the only expression open to criticism. There are no states in psychology, but there is an organization of instantaneous consciousnesses into the intentional unity of a more enduring consciousness: ‘the hypnagogic state’ is a temporal form whose structures develop during the period that Lhermitte calls ‘falling asleep’ (l’endormissement). It is this temporal form that we must describe.

The hypnagogic state is preceded by notable alterations of sensibility and motility. Leroy claims that visual sensations are the only ones abolished. In fact, the other sensations are somewhat dulled. One feels one’s body very confusedly, even more vaguely the contact with the sheets and the mattress. The spatial position of the body is very poorly defined. The orientation is prone to blatant disorders. The perception of time is uncertain.

The tone of most muscles is relaxed. Tonicity of attitude is almost completely suppressed. Some muscles, however, have an increased tonicity. For example, the eyelids are not only shut due to the relaxation of the retractors: the orbicular muscle must also contract. Likewise, if the large oblique muscles relax, the small oblique muscles contract: there results a divergence of the ocular axes; the pupillary opening comes to be placed under the bony ceiling of the eye socket. Likewise, finally, the pupillary contraction is due to the contraction of the iris.³⁸

The relaxing of the retractors and the large oblique muscles does not immediately follow the closing of the eyelids. For a while we still reflect on the events of the day. The eyes remain convergent, the eyelids are kept closed by the voluntary contraction of the orbicular muscles. Then thought becomes more vague. At the same time, the retractors become slackened. A positive effort is now needed to open the eyes. The large oblique muscles relax and the eyes roll in their sockets. At the least resumption of our reflection, the large oblique muscles contract and the eyes resume their position. Similarly, when I hear a noise, I sense my eyes ‘becomingfixed’, which is to say there is probably a double reflex of convergence and accommodation. At once the hypnagogic visions disappear and so, it seems, do the phosphenes.³⁹ At the same time that the muscles relax, we become conscious of a very characteristic state that one could call paralysis by auto-suggestion. Leroy gives a good description.

After an indeterminate time, it happens that I am always lying on my back and that, feeling myself awake, I want to open my eyes … Impossible! However, I do not feel (I notice this) that my eyelids are stuck, as they might be for some people on awakening, but I cannot raise them.⁴⁰

It is not a question – the preceding description has shown this clearly – of a simple sensation of peripheral origin, corresponding to the relaxing of muscle tone. Moreover, in the case cited by Leroy, there is also an active orbicular contraction. To the pure and simple muscular sensation (impression of distention, repose, abandon) there is added a sui generis consciousness: we note the impossibility of willing these movements, we do not feel able to animate our body. It is a question here of a very weak state of auto-suggestion, distantly related to hysterical pithiatism and to certain deliriums of influence. This chain, impossible to break, we have forged for ourselves. Let a worrying noise resound and we are alert at once. But as long as no excitation comes to disturb us, our consciousness comes to adhere to a relaxed muscle and, instead of purely and simply noting the hypotonicity, it is charmed in the proper sense by it, which is to say it does not observe it, but accepts it. One will notice that a totally new way of thinking appears here: it is a thought that can be caught in any trap, that accepts all invitations, that posits objects differently from waking thought, in the sense that it is no longer absolutely distinguished from them. Leroy shows clearly how one can fall directly from this state of auto-suggestion into the dream properly so-called. We will see later that there exists a very general mode of consciousness that bears a close relation to imagination and that I call captive consciousness. The dream is, among others, a captive consciousness.

The disorders of attention that precede the hypnagogic image have been much emphasized. Leroy speaks of a certain failing of voluntary attention, of ‘becoming incapable of applying oneself to more interesting external events, or to pure speculation’.⁴¹

It is evidently a question of an indispensable structure of hypnagogic consciousness, since one finds these disorders of attention in pathological cases. There exists, indeed, a pathology of hypnagogic images. Lhermitte collected three extremely interesting cases, but he describes them as cases of waking dreams, whereas they are obviously cases of hypnagogic visions.⁴² Here is the case of a woman of seventy-two who was suddenly struck by a seizure with upper peduncular syndrome:

…This patient, whose mental functions remained perfect, told me about the advent of very disconcerting manifestations. In the evening, at nightfall, as the shadows gathered in the corners of the room where she rested, she told us she was visited by animals sliding across the wooden floor without a sound; hens, cats, birds, moving softly and incessantly; she could count them, she could have drawn them; but these animals had, just like in a dream, a strange, bizarre look, they seemed to belong to a world far from ours … Before this apparition, the patient remained perfectly tranquil and serene … Despite the association of visual and tactile sensations, the patient did not think that these could have been genuine perceptions and she remained convinced of being subject to illusions. The fact to bear in mind is that the patient’s sleep at night was greatly disturbed, and insomnia is associated with a certain degree of sleepiness during the afternoon … these apparitions were realized, just as with a dream, precisely at the moment when the patient became uninterested in things, due to less acuity of visual perceptions dulled by the close of the day.

And he concludes:

What stands out most clearly (in the three cases) is the lack of interest in the present, current situation, a certain degree of disorientation…⁴³

It seems therefore that, in the normal case, as in the pathological cases, an alteration of attention is the constitutive basis of the hypnagogic consciousness.

Must we admit here the Bergsonian thesis, repeated by Van Bogart and Lhermitte in connection with the three cases cited above?

These hallucinatory images are due, in reality, to a weakening of the sense of reality, of attention to life, which brings to the images and the representations an abnormal clarity.⁴⁴

But then we would fall into the illusion of immanence: we would implicitly suppose that there exist two complementary worlds: one of things and one of images, and that, each time one is obscured the other is thereby illuminated. This is putting images on the same plane as things, giving both the same type of existence. Moreover, this explanation is valid for the hallucinatory reconjuring of memories, but it loses its validity when it is a question of entirely new images. Finally, and most important, it is not only a weakening of attention to life, to reality, that conditions the appearance of hypnagogic images: it is necessary, above all, to be careful to avoid paying attention to the images themselves.

‘In order to prolong the phenomenon, as with allowing it to emerge, a certain “absence” of voluntary attention is necessary’, Leroy rightly says.⁴⁵

And Baillarger: ‘One could not actively fix one’s attention without seeing the phenomenon disappear.’

Leroy, without expressly saying so, regards this absence of attention as a distraction.

‘For the phenomenon to develop it is necessary that a certain automatism be able to develop’, he says.⁴⁶

Consciousness would be a modifying capacity, endowed with a certain efficacy, which withdraws from the game and lets the phenomena unroll in blind succession, in the case of half-sleep. Leroy actually distinguishes between consciousness that is ‘contemplative’, and the hypnagogic consciousness, which is automatic. But this notion of a psychological automatism, whose apparent clarity has appealed to so many authors, is a philosophical absurdity. Hypnagogic phenomena are not ‘contemplated by consciousness’: they are consciousness. Now, consciousness cannot be an automatism: at most it can ape an automatism, link itself with automatic forms; such is the case here. But then, it is necessary to speak of a kind of captivity. This inattentive consciousness is not distracted: it is fascinated.

It is not that it is not entirely aimed at its object, but that it is not aimed in the manner of attention. All phenomena of attention have a motor basis (convergence, accommodation, narrowing of the visual field, etc.). These different movements are temporarily impossible: to reproduce them, we must emerge from the state of paralysis in which we find ourselves. We return then to the wakeful state. Now the movements allow the subject to be oriented in relation to the object and to observe it; it is these movements that give the subject its independence. Even the attention we pay to a kinaesthetic sensation implies an orientation of the body in relation to that sensation; even the attention we pay to a thought implies a kind of localization in space. To pay attention to something and to localize that something: two terms for one and the same operation. There results a kind of externality of the subject in relation to the object (be it a sensation, be it a thought). In falling asleep, the motor basis of attention is missing. There results another type of presence for the object. It is there, but without externality; in addition, we cannot observe it, which is to say, make and control hypotheses. What is lacking, precisely, is a contemplative power of consciousness, a certain way of keeping a distance from one’s images, from one’s own thoughts and leaving them to their own logical development, instead of placing all one’s weight on them, throwing oneself in the balance, being judge and accused, using one’s synthetic power to make a synthesis of whatever with whatever. A coach appeared to me that was the categorical imperative. One sees here the fascinated consciousness producing the image of a coach in the midst of reasoning about Kantian morality; it is no longer free to keep objects distinct, but accepts the invitations of the moment and makes an absurd synthesis in conferring on its new image a sense that permits a retention of the unity of reasoning. But, of course, this consciousness is not captive to its objects, it is captive to itself. We will study elsewhere, in connection with the dream, these participatory modes of thought. In any case, we can presently risk a conclusion: we do not contemplate the hypnagogic image, we are fascinated by it.

So here I am, trunk bent, muscles relaxed, eyes closed, lying on my side; I feel myself paralysed by a kind of auto-suggestion; I can no longer follow my thoughts: they let themselves be absorbed by a mass of impressions that divert them and fascinate them, or else they stagnate or are repeated indefinitely. At each instant, I am caught by something that I can no longer leave, which enchains me, which involves me in a circle of pre-logical thoughts, and disappears. The paralysis of my limbs and the fascination of my thoughts are but two aspects of a new structure: captive consciousness. The ground is prepared for hypnagogic images: I am in a special state, comparable to that of some psychaesthenics, the first lowering of potential, the first degradation of consciousness before the dream. Hypnagogic images do not represent a second unevenness: they appear on this ground or they do not appear at all. This is like certain psychoses that have a simple form and a delirious form. Hypnagogic images would be the delirious form. I can still reflect, which is to say produce consciousnesses of consciousnesses. But, to maintain the integrity of the primary consciousnesses, the reflective consciousnesses must let themselves be fascinated in turn, must not posit the primary consciousnesses in order to observe and describe them. They must partake of their illusions, posit the objects they posit, follow them into captivity. To tell the truth, a certain indulgence is necessary on my part. It remains in my power to shake this enchantment, to knock down these cardboard walls and to return to the wakeful world. This is why the transitory, unstable hypnagogic state is, in a sense, an artificial state. It is ‘the dream that cannot form itself’. Consciousness does not want to congeal entirely, in the sense in which one says that cream does not want to congeal. Hypnagogic images appear with a certain nervousness, a certain resistance to falling asleep, just like so many interrupted slips toward sleep. In a perfectly calm state one slides, without realizing it, from a state of simple fascination into a state of sleep. Only, in general, we want to fall asleep, which is to say we are conscious of drifting off to sleep. This consciousness delays the process and creates a certain state of conscious fascination that is precisely the hypnagogic state.

In this state of consenting captivity, I can let myself be fascinated by the field of phosphenes, or not. If there is fascination, hypnagogic images will appear.

My eyes are closed. A field of relatively stable luminous spots of varying colours and brightnesses appear. Movements begin, vague swirls, which create luminous forms without definite contours. Indeed, in order to describe forms, one must be able to follow their contours with one’s eyes. Now, as the entoptic lights are in the eyes, one cannot position one’s eyeballs in relation to these lights. However, we are constantly solicited to give contours to these lights. It even happens that, as we are beginning to fall asleep, we try to follow them with our eyes. A vain effort: the movement would be made along the spot, but it could not be because the spot is displaced by the movement. The result of these movements is indefinite and indefinable phosphorescent paths. Then, all at once, forms with clear contours appear.

About half an hour after lying down, each time I close my eyes, I see a number of brilliant points, stars, bizarre forms, among which I particularly recall this one, which was represented many times, whether large or small: a broken line formed irregular teeth of a saw, circumscribing as a whole an irregularly circular space.⁴⁷

These forms were constituted a little in advance of the entoptic spots: there is a slight time-lag between the hypnagogic field and the entoptic field. The first forms appeared at the edges, beneath, above, to the right, to the left: never – at least at the beginning – in the centre of the field. As we have shown above, after having tried in vain for a moment to observe the entoptic field, one suddenly finds oneself in the act of seeing these contours. One does not posit these forms as really existent outside oneself, nor even as existing in the entopticfield: one only posits that one sees them at the moment. In a word: I do not see the teeth of the saw (I see nothing but the phosphenes), but I know that what I see is a figure of teeth of a saw. Similarly, in the oneiric delirium of mental confusion the patient knows that the sheets are trenches. Nothing new has appeared, no image has been projected on the entoptic lights, but, in apprehending them, one apprehends them as teeth of a saw or as stars. The slight time lag between the hypnagogic field and the entoptic field seems to me an illusion: it simply comes from the fact that we do not perceive the entoptic spots as having the form of the teeth of a saw, but from the outset of the entoptic lights, we perceive the teeth of a saw. The visual field is specified, oriented, tightened while becoming the hypnagogic field. In sum, the phosphenes function at this time as intuitive matter for an apprehension of the teeth of a saw. There is an intention towards the teeth that seizes them and that they intuitively fulfil. But of course this intention is of a very particular order: it undoubtedly resembles that which sees a face in a spot or a flame, but this latter is free and conscious of its spontaneity. By contrast, the intention in the hypnagogic consciousness is chained: it has been unhooked, caused by a need to shape the forms of the phosphenes; it came to apprehend them: they do not resist – because in fact they have no form – but neither do they lend themselves to it: and consciousness constitutes a new object through them. Does it posit the existence of these lines, these curves? No: it entirely suspends all theses concerning their existence. It posits only having seen them, that they are ‘its representation’. It had to see forms because it sought some; the idea, with a real fatality, immediately took shape in the form of vision. Such is the radical falseness of the hypnagogic image: it realizes as subjective phenomenon, on the plane of perception, what is in fact but an empty intention. The real qualities of the entoptic matter act as support of the intentions that greatly enrich it. For example, I see three beautiful violet lines. In fact, I know that I see the violet, but I do not see it, or rather, I know that I see something that is violet. This something, as I account for it after the disappearance of the image, is the luminosity of the entoptic spot. I have therefore apprehended as violet the luminosity; the luminosity played the role of violet etc.

Images properly so-called (people, animals, etc.) come next. Cases are cited where they would appear before any geometric figure, but I have been able to observe that, most of the time, one hardly notices these arabesques of the hypnagogic field. In point of fact, it seems to me that they always appear first. They delimit a three-dimensional space starting with the entoptic field; they posit a frame. More complex images are sudden convictions concerning the geometric forms. It is almost equivalent to what one finds in wakeful thought when one says: these lines evoke a face for me. But here thought is chained and cannot move back on itself. To think that the lines evoke a face is to see a face in the lines. Captive thought is compelled to realize all its intentions. I have been able to follow their appearance and their disintegration frequently enough. In this respect, nothing is more instructive than what one can call failing visions. For example, I see a coloured mass or an image of a certain form and a vague resemblance inclines me to think ‘eagle’. If some noise, some thought suddenly disturbs me, the interpretation vanishes midway and I can then account for the state as ‘about to congeal’, which is to say, be realized on the sensible plane, to be performed. The essential character of the chained consciousness seems to be fatality. Determinism – which could in no way apply to the facts of consciousness – posits that, such phenomenon being given, such other must necessarily follow. Fatalism posits that such event must happen and that it is that future event that determines the series that will lead up to it. It is not determinism but fatalism that is the inverse of freedom. One might even say that fatality, incomprehensible in the physical world, is, on the other hand, perfectly in its place in the world of consciousness. Alain has shown this well.⁴⁸ In captive consciousness, indeed, what is lacking is the representation of the possible, which is to say the faculty of suspending judgement. But all thought captures and enchains consciousness – and consciousness plays with it, realizes it at the same time as it thinks it. Had the sudden noise not woken me, my interpretation ‘eagle’ would have matured to the form ‘it is an eagle that I see’. It would have become a certainty when taken for a completed consciousness. Thus the sudden changes in essence of the objects of hypnagogic consciousness represent so many sudden changes of belief:

Suddenly, I see that the lines in question are strings.⁴⁹

The same text, moreover, clearly shows how thought crystallizes into intuitive certainty:

and, at once, I also see the clothes pegs that hold them (socks) on the strings.⁵⁰

The strings and the socks call up the idea of clothes pegs. But that idea is not thought as a pure idea; it is realized at once in certainty: what I see comprises clothes pegs. One can see clearly here the degradation of knowledge in intuition.

It is necessary to explain, of course, the incessant changes that are produced in hypnagogic images. It is a question, indeed, of a world in perpetual motion: figures are transformed, in rapid succession, a line becomes a string, a string becomes a face, etc. In addition, each figure is animated by translation movements and rotations, which are but whirling wheels of fire, shooting stars that descend quickly, faces that approach or recede. It seems that these movements are explained by three factors: for one thing, the very course of chained thought that is never short of interpretations; one obvious fact chases another; one dazzling certainty of seeing a face succeeds the obvious certainty of seeing a skeleton … etc. In the second place, the very changes in the entoptic field furnish a perpetually renewed intuitive basis for certainties that are always new. Whether there is at the origin of these lights a spontaneous activity of the optic nerve, circulatory phenomena, or the mechanical action of the eyelids on the eyeballs, or all these elements at the same time, these causes constantly vary and, consequently, their effects vary as well. At the basis of these figures that turn rapidly on themselves or that unroll in spirals, I think, there is some continuous sparkling of some entoptic lights. The third factor would naturally be the movements of the eyeballs. This is how I would explain certain paradoxical phenomena of hypnagogic visions; for example, the fact that a star that seems to slide from top to bottom and cross all of my visual field, appears at the same time to remain always at the same height in relation to my optical axes.

But what is important to us here is not to determine the structure of a hypnagogic consciousness in all its details. I only want to show that it is indeed an imaging consciousness and that it is very much like the consciousnesses that finds images in a spot, in a flame. In one case as in the other the matter is plastic: here arabesques, feeble forms, there lights without contours. In both cases the mind is relaxed; often the position is the same: often the subject, lying and unable to sleep, amuses himself by following the arabesques on the wall tapestry with his eyes. It is in this situation that one discovers most images. Here, moreover, lies the beginning of fascination. Often the arabesques take on a strange aspect, the lines are taken into a kind of motionless swirl, one grasps moving forms, directions that join them, then disappear. Our gaze is grabbed by certain ensembles and all the rest of the visual field remains vague and shifting. It is at that moment that new forms appear, faces. In the case of a severe fever, these faces and persons can have a quasi-hallucinatory clarity. However, between these two types of consciousness, there remains one very great difference: in the case of the arabesques, one does not posit that the object has the real quality of representing an animal, a face. There is no positing of existence. There is, in consciousness, a feeling of spontaneity. It is a case of a playful spontaneity that is conscious of itself as such. In the hypnagogic image this playful consciousness has disappeared. One does not posit the image as object, but one posits it as representation. One sees, if not a cat, at least a representation of a cat; or again, to be more exact, one is in the act of seeing a nonexistent cat. No doubt there remains the hypnagogic consciousness, in spite of everything, a vague feeling of spontaneity, of indulgence towards oneself. One indeed feels that one can stop everything at will. But it is a case of nonthetic consciousness that is contradicted, somehow, by the way in which the object is posited. It is, moreover, because consciousness feels itself imperfectly chained that it posits its object as nonexistent. It pretends to be seeing a cat; but, as it feels itself, in spite of everything, at the origin of this vision, it does not posit its correlate as existent. Whence this paradox: I really see something, but what I see is nothing. This is why this chained consciousness takes the form of an image: because it does not reach to the end of itself. In the dream, the captivity is complete, so the cat is posited as an object. In the hypnagogic image we have a primitive positing of consciousness that closely resembles our positing when faced with Dürer’s engraving: on the one hand I see Death, we say; on the other hand that Death that I see does not exist. It is the same in the present case. But, in the imaging consciousness of the engraving, the matter preserves its independence, which is to say it can be an object of perception. In the case of hypnagogic consciousness, the matter is almost inseparable from the consciousness one has of it, because the grasp of consciousness radically transforms it, not only in its function, but in its very constitution. No doubt, in the case of the imaging apprehension of an engraving, the flat became the relief, the colourless became the coloured, the empty became the full, etc. But, at least, most of the qualities of the engraving grasped as image remained with it when it became an object of perception. In hypnagogic consciousness there is almost no relation between the image and its intuitive support. So that, when the imaging consciousness disintegrates, one cannot easily find, in the perceptual attitude, the elements that had the function of matter.

Although the imaging consciousness that is constituted upon spots and arabesques differs profoundly in belief from hypnagogic consciousness, there nevertheless exist intermediaries between them. We have seen, indeed, that in the former there is the beginning of fascination. I suppose that this fascination could be total, when certain privileged objects are fixed on for a long time in special psychological conditions. The crystal ball of magicians, the coffee grounds of the clairvoyant seem to me to be such objects. It is very probable that a docile and suitably disposed subject sees scenes in a crystal ball. Here, indeed, it is a case of an object rather close to the entoptic spots: nothing precise, nothing fixed in that crystal ball. The eye cannot settle anywhere, it is held by no form. When the vision appears, solicited by this constant imbalance, it is given spontaneously as an image: it is, says the subject, the image of what will happen to him. This shows us that the entoptic spots are far from being the only possible matter for hypnagogic visions. One can, on the contrary, construct a whole class of objects susceptible to functioning as the intuitive basis for these images. It is enough that they are faint forms, disintegrate under observation, and yet endlessly reshape themselves, forms in which the gaze loses itself (whether it meets nothing, as in the crystal ball, or constantly meets pin points, as in the case of coffee grounds), in brief, forms that have the property of endlessly exciting the attention and endlessly deceiving it. Let us allow, in addition, the subject a certain sleepiness, a state of suggestibility: the hypnagogic image will be born.

VII. FROM PORTRAIT TO MENTAL IMAGE

We will now proceed to the description of the mental image, which completes the series. First, it would be well to review the road travelled.

The underlying intention has not changed. In the different cases that we have studied, it has always been a question of animating a certain matter to make a representation of an absent or nonexistent object. The matter was never a perfect analogue of the object to be represented: some knowledge came to interpret it and to fill in the gaps. It is these correlative elements, matter and knowledge, that have evolved from case to case.

A. Matter. The matter of a portrait is a quasi-face. No doubt it is first of all a neutral element that could just as well function as support for a perceptual consciousness as for an imaging consciousness. But this indifference is mainly theoretical. In fact, the spontaneity of consciousness is strongly solicited: these forms, these colours, strongly organized, almost impose themselves as an image of Pierre. If it takes my fancy to perceive them, they resist. A picture spontaneously offers itself in relief to the imaging consciousness, and the perceptual consciousness would have great difficulty seeing it as flat. This quasi-face, moreover, is accessible to observation: of course, I do not refer the new qualities that I see there to the object that I have before my eyes, to this painted canvas. I project them far beyond the picture, to the real Pierre. As a result, each judgement that I make is given as probable (whereas in genuine observation judgements are certain). When I say ‘Pierre has blue eyes’, I imply: ‘At least, if the picture represents him faithfully.’

The matter of my image is a strictly individual object: this painting is unique in time and space. It should be added to this that the features of the quasi-face also have this inalienable individuality: that quasi-smile is the same as no other. However this individuality appears only to perceptual consciousness. In passing from perception to image, the matter acquires a certain generality. We say: ‘Yes, it is just as he smiles’, implying that the smile represents a mass of Pierre’s individual smiles. We apprehend the different qualities of the matter as representatives that are valid for each of a mass of qualities that appear and disappear on Pierre: this pink colour becomes the pink of his cheeks; this green gleam is the green of his eyes. What we seek through the picture is not Pierre such as he could have appeared to us the day before yesterday or on such-and-such a day of last year: it is Pierre in general, a prototype that acts as a thematic unity of all the individual appearances of Pierre.⁵¹

As we rise through the series of imaging consciousnesses, the matter becomes more and more impoverished. At the outset, in spite of some differences, what one sees in perception passes as such into the image: what changes – and radically – is above all the sense of the matter, which returned to itself in the first case, to another object in the second. As with the imitation, what appears to imaging consciousness is not at all similar to what is seen in perception. The matter is impoverished in passing from one function to another: I drop a host of qualities. So that what, finally, forms the intuitive basis of my image can never be that of a perception. As of this moment an essential poverty appears in the matter of the image. It follows that the object intended through the matter grows in generality. When Franconay impersonates Chevalier, it is no longer even ‘Chevalier in his brown costume’,‘Chevalier with his green eyes’, etc., that I see through her. It is just Chevalier. In the case of the schematic drawing, I project through the black lines ‘the runner-while-running’, which acts as a prototype for all possible runners. It is difficult, at this level, to differentiate clearly the idea of the runner from its image. We will see later that this can be done, but the object of the idea and the object of the image – though taken in different ways – are the same. As of this moment we are in the presence of the phenomenon of quasi-observation, which is to say one does not read on the matter (face of the impersonator, lines of the schematic drawing) anything other than what one puts there. The further the matter of imaging consciousness moves away from the matter of perception, the more it is penetrated with knowledge, the more attenuated its resemblance to the object of the image becomes. A new phenomenon appears: the phenomenon of equivalence. The intuitive matter is chosen for its relations of equivalence to the matter of the object. The movement is hypostatized as equivalent to the form, the luminosity as equivalent to the colour. This implies, of course, that the knowledge plays an increasingly important role, to the point of substituting for intuition on the very ground of intuition. At the same time the properly imaging intention is solicited less and less by the matter of the image. To initiate it requires a system of signs (imitation), knowledge and a collection of conventions (schematic image), the free play of the mind (spots on the wall, arabesques), or the fascination of consciousness (hypnagogic images). In a word, as knowledge takes on more importance, the intention loses in spontaneity.

B. Knowledge. Knowledge is not substituted in its ideational form for the failing matter. As such, it cannot fill the gaps in intuition. It must undergo degradation, to which we will return. It passes to the intuitive in the form of mime; it flows in movements. A new phenomenon appears: symbolic movement, which, by its very nature as movement, is on the side of intuition and, by its signification, on the side of pure thought. But it can happen that knowledge is directly incorporated in the other sensible qualities, as in the case of hypnagogic images. We will see that this degradation of knowledge is not exclusively a phenomenon of imagination and that it is already found in simple perception.

VIII. MENTAL IMAGE

Absurd experiments have been conducted to show that the image has a sensory content:

If, for instance, the observer is seated in a well-lighted room facing a sheet of ground glass, behind which is a screened projection lantern, it is often impossible for him to decide whether the faint colours that he sees on the glass are due to the lantern or to his own imagination. You say to him: Imagine that there is an image of a banana on the glass! – and in many cases it makes no difference at all whether you show a strip of very faint yellow light from the lantern or whether you shut off the objective light altogether. The strip of seen yellow is confused with a yellow image.⁵²

Schraub’s more recent experiments are of the same quality:

The subject hears noises of measured volume, and is asked to reproduce these noises mentally. The subject is asked to compare each mental noise with the noise that served as stimulus to be reproduced, and which is increased or decreased in volume until it is no louder than the subject’s representation (or reproduced image) of it.⁵³

These investigations would make sense only if the image were a weak perception. But it is given as image. Any comparison of loudness between it and perception is therefore impossible. One does not know who exhibits the greater misunderstanding: the experimenter who asks such questions or the subject who submissively answers them.

Above, I have defined the image as ‘an act that aims in its corporeality at an absent or nonexistent object, through a physical or psychic content that is given not as itself, but in the capacity of analogical representative of the object aimed at’. In the case of the mental image the content has no externality. One sees a portrait, a caricature, a spot: one does not see a mental image. To see an object is to localize it in space, between this table and that carpet, at a certain height, on my right or on my left. However, my mental images do not mix with the objects that surround me. Some say the present sensations act as ‘reducers’. But why should there be reduction, why not rather composition?

In fact, the mental image aims at a real thing, which exists among others in the world of perception; but it aims at it through a psychic content. No doubt that content must fulfil certain conditions: in the image consciousness we apprehend an object as an ‘analogon’ for another object. Pictures, caricatures, impersonators, spots on the wall, entoptic lights: all these representatives have the common character of being objects for consciousness. The purely psychic ‘content’ of the mental image cannot escape this law: a consciousness that faces the thing that it aims at is a perceptual consciousness; a consciousness that aims emptily at the thing is a pure sign consciousness. This necessity for the matter of the mental image to be already constituted as an object for consciousness, I call the transcendence of the representative. But transcendence does not mean externality: it is the represented thing that is external, not its mental ‘analogon’. The illusion of immanence consists in transferring the externality, spatiality, and all the sensible qualities of the thing to the transcendent psychic content. It does not have these qualities: it represents them, but in its own way.

It would now seem that we have only to describe these analogical contents as we have described the material contents of the consciousness of a portrait or of an imitation. But here we meet a great difficulty: in the cases previously described, when the truly imaging consciousness has disappeared, there remains a sensible residue that one can describe: the painted canvas or the spot on the wall. In repeating certain movements or in letting the lines and colours of the painting act on us we can, without reforming the imaging consciousness properly so-called, at least reconstitute the ‘analogon’ without much trouble starting with the sensible residue. The matter of my imaging consciousness of the portrait is evidently that painted canvas. It must be acknowledged that reflective description does not directly tell us anything concerning the representative matter of the mental image. That is because, when the imaging consciousness is annihilated, its transcendent content is annihilated with it; there remains no residue that can be described, we find ourselves facing another synthetic consciousness that has nothing in common with the first. We therefore cannot hope to grasp this content by introspection. We must choose: either we form the image, in which case we know (connaissons) its content only by the function of the analogon (whether we form an unreflective consciousness or a reflective consciousness), we apprehend on it the qualities of the object aimed at; or we do not form the image, in which case we no longer have the content, nothing remains of it. In a word, we know – because this is an essential necessity – that there is in the mental image a psychic datum that functions as an analogon, but if we wish to determine more clearly the nature and the components of this datum, we are reduced to conjectures.

We must therefore leave the ground of phenomenological description and turn to experimental psychology. That is to say we must, as in the experimental sciences, make hypotheses and seek their confirmation in observation and experience. This confirmation never permits us to go beyond the domain of the probable.

Part II
The Probable

THE NATURE OF THE ANALOGON IN THE MENTAL IMAGE

I.  KNOWLEDGE

The image is defined by its intention. It is the intention that makes it the case that the image of Pierre is consciousness of Pierre. If the intention is taken at its origin, which is to say when it springs from our spontaneity, it already implies, no matter how naked and bare it may seem, a certain knowledge: it is, hypothetically, the knowledge (connaissance) of Pierre. I admit that this knowledge (connaissance) is a simple empty expectation, a direction: in every way it is a direction towards Pierre, an expectation of Pierre. In a word, ‘the pure intention’ is a combination of contradictory terms, since it is always an intention towards something. But the intention does not limit itself, in the image, to aiming at Pierre in an indeterminate fashion: he is aimed at as blond, tall, with a snub or aquiline nose, etc. It must therefore be charged with knowledge (connaissances), it must aim through a certain layer of consciousness that we can call the layer of knowledge. So that, in the imaging consciousness, one can distinguish knowledge and intention only by abstraction. The intention is defined only by the knowledge since one represents in image only what one knows in some sort of way and, reciprocally, knowledge here is not simply knowledge, it is an act, it is what I want to represent to myself. I do not limit myself to the knowledge that Pierre is blond, this knowledge is a requirement: it is what I must realize in intuition. Naturally, this knowledge should not be considered as added to an already constituted image to clarify it: it is the active structure of the image.

An image could not exist without a piece of knowledge that constitutes it. This is the deep reason for the phenomenon of quasi-observation. Knowledge, on the other hand, can exist in a free state, which is to say constitute a consciousness all by itself. Bühler writes:

I affirm that on principle every object can be fully and exactly thought without the aid of an image. I can think in a fully determined way and without representation of any individual shade of the blue colour of a painting in my room, provided only that it is possible for that object to be given to me by some means other than sensations.¹

What should we understand by knowledge in a free state? Does it really aim at objects? One of Bühler’s subjects will inform us:

– Do you know how many primary colours there are on the Madonna of the Sistine Chapel?

– Yes. At first I had an image of the Madonna in her cloak, then one of two other figures, notably one of Saint Barbara in yellow. I thus had the red, the yellow, the green. Then I asked myself if ‘the blue’ was also to be found there and I had the notion, without an image, that it was represented there.

The knowledge aims at the blue as it is represented in the painting and as the fourth primary colour. Messer’s subject gave a similar response:

The word mountain suggests to a subject ‘the consciousness’ (without words) of a direction towards something determined that could be climbed.

This reveals that the mountain is not conceived as an intuitive reality but as a certain rule. Bühler’s classification, moreover, shows this well. He divides the ‘Bewusstheiten’ into three categories. They are consciousness of rules, consciousness of relations, and consciousness of intentions. The last term, which is extremely inappropriate, finally comes to designate consciousness of order, arrangement, system. Briefly, knowledge in a pure state is presented as a consciousness of relations. Naturally, it is an empty consciousness, because sensible matter is thought of only as designated by the terms, as support of the relations. For example, the blue of the painting is thought of only as ‘the fourth primary colour’. Knowledge can be as detailed as one wants, it can embrace a mass of diverse relations in a complex synthesis; it can aim at concrete relations between individual objects (for example, M. Lebrun can be given to me as ‘the President of France’); it can precede or accompany judgement; it can even be joined to a sign or a group of signs: it remains nonetheless an empty sign consciousness.

But, says Husserl, this empty consciousness can be fulfilled.² Not with words: words are the support only of knowledge. It is the image that is the intuitive ‘fulfilment’ (Erfüllung) of the signification.³ If I think ‘swallow’, for example, I can have at first only a word and an empty signification in mind. If the image appears, a new synthesis is made and the empty signification becomes consciousness full of swallow.

This theory, I admit, seems outrageous to me. First, what could the image be without the synthesis of signification? We cannot allow that the image comes ‘to fulfil’ an empty consciousness: it is itself a consciousness. It seems that Husserl was here the dupe of the illusion of immanence. But what worries me above all is what we can call the question of the degradation of knowledge. Is it entirely certain that knowledge, in passing from the free state to that of the intentional structure of imaging consciousness, undergoes no other alteration than a fulfilment? Is it not rather the object of a radical modification? Psychologists who have studied – by the method of experimental introspection – the relations between image and thought have discovered in their subjects, alongside pure knowledge reported as ‘Bewusstheiten’,‘Bewusstseinlagen’, ‘Sphärenbewusstsein’, etc., curious states which, although containing no representative element, are already reported by the subjects as images.

Onefinds very significant reports in Schwiete.

1. Subject I: ‘open’

‘I had an indeterminate image of an “opening”.’

2.Subject II: ‘dissimilar’

‘I saw two indeterminate and dissimilar objects.’⁴

So here is an opening that is an opening of nothing and, moreover, does not even have a determinate form. However it is an opening as imaged. Here are two objects that do not even have spatial characteristics, in a word, that have no intuitive quality by which they could differ from one another and yet they are grasped when imaged as dissimilar. One wonders here how the image differs from a pure knowledge. And yet it is affirmed as image.

Burloud is clearer still. He writes, in connection with work by Messer: ‘To the lowest degree, a spatial direction, a direction of outwardness.’ At the word atlas subject II had a visual representation of a place on a map. ‘It was rather a direction beyond the Mediterranean Sea …’ Often the subjects hesitate over whether to name it an image or a thought. At the word nail Subject I reported the presence in his consciousness of something visual or conceptual but of such a nature that it could give rise to a visual impression. ‘I thought of something long and pointed.’ These states are designated by expressions such as: a piece of knowledge, a simple tendency to a visual representation, the germ of a visual representation, etc.⁵

We rightly said: the knowledge while entering the constitution of the image undergoes a radical modification.⁶ It undergoes this even before the image is constituted. There exist consciousnesses of a particular type that are empty, just like the pure sign consciousnesses, but which are not pure sign consciousnesses. Right from the start they affirm their intimate relation with the sensible. They are given as ‘something visual or conceptual but of such a nature that it can engender a visual impression’. We are far from the ‘Bewusstheiten’ of Bühler. It is indeed still knowledge, but degraded knowledge.

Could the knowledge that is presented as ‘the germ of a visual representation’ be Bergson’s dynamic schema? This latter is indeed presented as determined in its inner structure by its relation with future images…

It consists in an expectation of images, in an intellectual attitude intended sometimes to prepare the advent of one definite image, as in the case of memory, sometimes to organize a more or less prolonged play among the images capable of inserting themselves in it, as in the case of creative imagination. The schema is tentatively what the image is decisively. It presents in terms of becoming, dynamically, what the images give us statically as already made.⁷

At the time when Bergson conceived his theory, the dynamic schema was a great advance on associationism. Today, psychology has freed itself even more from the influence of Taine. Thought, irreducible to sensation, is defined by meaning and intentionality. It is an act. In the light of these new theses, the dynamic schema seems like an effort that is as yet too timid and that misses its target. No doubt it is already a synthetic organization, and this is better than a simple association of images. But one seeks in vain, in Bergson, a positive description of the intentionality that constitutes it. Such is indeed the constant ambiguity of Bergsonian dynamism: melodic syntheses – but without a synthetic act; organizations without an organizing power. Such is also the dynamic schema: dynamic, it is without doubt, in the fashion of a force, of a whirlpool. But it is clearly in no way an act: it is a thing.

This basic insufficiency gives rise to all the ambiguity of its nature. Sometimes it seems like a transitory form that can take a representation.

To work intellectually is to take one and the same representation and lead it through different planes of consciousness, in a direction which goes from the abstract to the concrete, from the schema to the image.⁸

Sometimes it is an organizing power that is eclipsed behind what it has organized:

Present and acting in the work of calling up images, it draws back and disappears behind the images once evoked, its work being then accomplished … [it is] a representation of a different kind always capable of being realized in images but always distinct from them.⁹

It is likewise impossible to grasp the exact role of affectivity in the constitution of these schemas. On this Bergson writes:

when I want to recall a proper name, I turn first to the general impression which I have kept of it; and this is what will act as the ‘dynamic schema’.¹⁰

And:

I started with the general impression which I had of it. It was an impression of strangeness, but not of strangeness in general – rather of a certain definite kind of strangeness. There was, as it were, a dominant note of barbarism, rapine.¹¹

But these impressions are not, however, purely affective since Bergson calls his schema: ‘an individual schema, having its particular affective collaboration’.¹²

To tell the truth, Bergson has not taken enough trouble to describe his schema clearly. What is important to him above all, it is to find in it qualities that he emphasizes in all his descriptions of consciousness: the schema is a becoming;¹³ moreover, its elements interpenetrate.¹⁴ It is by this interpenetration and this melodic duration that the schema is distinguished from the image ‘with its fixed contours, with its juxtaposed parts’. It is the life, the very movement of consciousness. It ‘draws what was’. We find here the grand Bergsonian themes and the classic oppositions of the system: the schema is the moving, the living; the image is the static, the dead, the space that subtends the movement.

It is precisely this opposition which seems to me unfortunate and which prevents me from accepting Bergson’s description wholesale. From the beginning I have said that knowledge does not disappear once the image consciousness is constituted: it is not ‘eclipsed’ behind images. It is not ‘always capable of being realized in images but always distinct from them’. It represents the active structure of the imaging consciousness. We cannot accept this radical distinction between the image and the schema. If it were so, then we would have to learn our images like our perceptions; for this we must observe them; to observe them we would have to have schemas, and so on to infinity.

Moreover this conception of the image as ‘a representation … with its juxtaposed parts’ seems to me to belong to the illusion of immanence. The parts are juxtaposed in the objects. But the image is an internal synthesis that is characterized by a real interpenetration of its elements. We will return to people in dreams who can be at once a man and a woman, an old person and a child.¹⁵ Leroy remarks very acutely that our wakeful images may have also this polymorphism. This will be shown in Part III. In any case, a whole category of images, those Flach calls symbolic schemas, manifest in their primary wholeness a mass of things that discursive thought must analyse and juxtapose.¹⁶

To comprehend the meaning of the word: Baudelaire.

I saw at once in open space, on a completely dark background a splash of blue-green colour, like that of vitriol and as if it were thrown there, with a single and large stroke of the brush. The splash was longer than broad – perhaps twice as long as broad. I knew at once that this colour must express morbidity, the specific decadence that characterizes Baudelaire. I wonder if this image could apply to Wilde or Huysmans. Impossible: I sense a resistance as strong as if someone had proposed something to me that was contrary to logic. This image is valid only for Baudelaire and, from this moment on, will be representative of that poet for me.

It is therefore advisable to leave aside such fairly vague expressions as ‘becoming’, ‘dynamism’, etc. This psychology of ‘sympathy with life’ has had its day. No doubt there exists, as Bergson saw, a certain state of knowledge that is ‘waiting for images’. But this waiting for images is homogeneous with the image itself. This waiting is, moreover, very specific; what the knowledge awaits is to transform itself into an image. I still prefer Spaier’s expression ‘dawn of the image’ to the expression ‘dynamic schema’, because it has been well shown that there is continuity between the empty imaging knowledge and the full imaging consciousness.¹⁷

Subject II:

Ah it is … I stopped because I knew what I wanted to say before the word ‘rich’ came, I felt an inner release, an ah! A kind of inner movement comparable to a swiftly increasing noise of a siren …, I sense that it will come, it is coming, I know that I have understood … then the word emerges.¹⁸

And Spaier adds:

There exists therefore a tendency not to go to the end: one tries to economize with the image, in order to move faster, one is content with its dawn.

I think that there is a greater difference between an imaging knowledge and a pure sign knowledge than between an imaging knowledge and an image in full bloom. And it is advisable to look further into this difference, which is to say, exactly determine the nature of the degradation that the knowledge undergoes in passing from the state of ‘meaning’ to the imaging state. For this, we will examine a little more the privileged cases where the imaging knowledge is present in a pure state, which is to say as free consciousness.

The reports of the Würzburg psychologists are significant in that regard: onefinds with the subjects two types of empty consciousness.

Type I: CIRCLE. At first a general consciousness (allgemeines Bewusstsein) corresponding to the concept: geometrical figure. The word was not present.

Type II: PATIENCE–FORBEARANCE. A particular consciousness in a biblical environment.

Haughty King: ‘I feel myself transported to another sort of reality, one of ballads and old legends … A direction towards the past of Germany where the haughty monarch would play a big role.’¹⁹

The ‘circle’ consciousness is general, the ‘patience–forbearance’ particular. But the difference does not lie there. Indeed, the consciousnesses of type I can also be particular. But in the first case, what is grasped is a rule; in the second, it is a thing. It is this that we must examine by means of another example.

I read a novel. I am highly interested in the fate of the hero who will escape from prison, for example. I learn with great curiosity about the least details of his preparations for escape. However, writers are agreed in pointing out the poverty of the images which accompany my reading.²⁰ In fact the majority of the subjects have very few and they are very incomplete. I would even have added that the appearances are generally outside the activity of reading, properly so-called, when, for example, the reader retrogresses and remembers the events of the preceding chapter, dreams about the book, etc. In brief, the images appear with the stops and failures of reading. The rest of the time, when the reader is engrossed, there is no mental image. I have noted this in myself on many occasions and several people have confirmed it to me. A multitude of images is the characteristic of an inattentive and frequently interrupted reading.

However, it cannot be that the imaging element is completely lacking in reading. If it were, how would we explain the force of our emotions? We take sides, we become indignant; some even cry. Actually, in reading as in the theatre, we are in the presence of a world and we attribute to that world just as much existence as we do to that of the theatre; that is to say, a complete existence in the irreal. Verbal signs are not, as in the case of mathematics for example, intermediaries between pure significations and our consciousness: they represent the surface of contact between the imaginary world and us. To describe correctly the phenomenon of reading it is therefore necessary to say that the reader is in the presence of a world. It is this that proves clearly – if it were to be proven – the existence of what Binet calls ‘latent images’.

We often have images much more precise than we suppose; in reading a play for example the images of position, of stage setting; we make, without perceiving it, a set of scenery. We must draw, for example, the plan of the scene so that we can at once become conscious of our own setting by an internal feeling of resistance.²¹

Naturally, we cannot accept this thesis: for us an image is a consciousness, and ‘a latent consciousness’ would be a contradiction in terms. However, it should be agreed that something plays the role of these claimed latent images: the imaging knowledge.

Consciousness of reading is a sui generis consciousness that has its own structure. When we are reading a poster or a phrase isolated from its context we simply produce a sign consciousness, a lexis. If we are reading a scholarly work, we produce a consciousness in which the intention adheres to the sign at every instant. Our thought, our knowledge slip into the words and we become conscious of it on the words, as an objective property of the words. Naturally, these objective properties do not remain separated but fuse from one word to another, one phrase to another, one page to another: hardly have we opened a book and we are faced with an objective sphere of signification.

Thus far, nothing new. It is always a case of signifying knowledge. But if the book is a novel, everything changes: the sphere of objective signification becomes an irreal world. To read a novel is to take a general attitude of consciousness: this attitude largely resembles that of a spectator who, in the theatre, sees the curtain rising. It is preparing to discover a whole world, which is not that of perception, but neither is it that of mental images. To be present at a play is to apprehend the characters on the actors, the forest of As You Like It on the cardboard trees. To read is to realize contact with the irreal world on the signs. In this world there are plants, animals, fields, towns, people: initially those mentioned in the book and then a host of others that are not named but are in the background and give this world its depth. (For example, in a chapter describing a ball, all the guests of whom nothing is said but who are there ‘making up the numbers’.) These concrete beings are the objects of my thoughts: their irreal existence is the correlate of the syntheses that I effect guided by words. That is, I effect these same syntheses in the manner of perceptual syntheses and not of signifying syntheses.

If I read: ‘They entered Pierre’s office’, that simple notation becomes the silent theme of all subsequent syntheses. When I read the account of their dispute, I situate their dispute in the office. Here is the phrase ‘he left slamming the door’: I know that the door is that of Pierre’s office; I know that Pierre’s office is on the third floor of a new building and that this building is in the suburbs of Paris. Naturally there is nothing of all this in the single phrase that I have just read. I must know (connaître) the preceding chapters to have this knowledge. Therefore all that exceeds, includes, orients, and localizes the naked signification of the phrase that I read is the object of knowledge. But this knowledge is not a pure ‘meaning’. It is not in the form of signification that I think ‘office’,‘thirdfloor’,‘building’,‘suburbs of Paris’. I think them in the manner of things. It is enough, to understand the difference, to read this phrase in a report: ‘The syndicate of property owners of Paris’, and this one from a novel: ‘he descended the three floors of the building in haste’. What has changed? Not the content itself of the knowledge ‘building’, but the way it is known. In the first case the content of the knowledge is aimed at by the consciousness as a rule; in the second as an object. No doubt the knowledge is always empty consciousness of an order, a rule. But at times it aims at the order initially and at the object through the order, in a very vague way as ‘that which supports the order’, which is to say still as a relation – and at times it aims at the object initially and at the order only in so far as it is constitutive of the object.

But what must we understand here by object? Must we believe with Bühler that ‘I can think in a fully determinate way and without representation any individual shade of the blue colour of a painting’? This is to commit a fundamental error, which is not only psychological but ontological. The individual shade ‘blue’ and the knowledge belong to two different orders of existence. The blue colour of the portrait is something inexpressible. Kant has already shown the irreducible heterogeneity of sensation and thought. What constitutes the individuality of the particular blue, here, before me, is precisely what makes the sensible character of the sensation. Pure thought therefore cannot aim at it as such. It thinks of it from outside, as a substrate of a relation, for example as ‘the fourth primary colour of the Sistine Madonna’ or as‘occupying such a place in the scale of colours’. To try to catch it directly is to seek to see it. But in order to try to see this unique and concrete blue as blue, we must already possess it as such, or how could we know what it is we want to see? So knowledge can catch the object only in its essence, which is to say by the order of its qualities. Only, the imaging knowledge does not aim at this order in itself. It cannot yet aim at the blue, it no longer wants to aim at ‘the fourth primary colour of the Sistine Madonna’. It aims at something that is that fourth colour. The relation passes behind the thing. But the thing is as yet only ‘something’. That is to say, a certain positing empty of opacity and externality – opacity and externality that are precisely determined by the relations that were made to pass behind their density. This is well shown by the example I have already cited:

At the word nail the subject reports in consciousness the presence of something visual – or conceptual but of such a nature that it could engender a visual impression: I thought of something long and pointed.

If the knowledge is not given as conceptual, that is because it affirms itself as awaiting the visual. For want of anything better it gives its content as something long and pointed.

It is evidently a case of a radical modification of intention. Pure knowledge is pre-objective, at least when it is not associated with a word. That is to say, formal essence and objective essence are undifferentiated in it. At times it appears in the form of what one of Binet’s subjects calls ‘a feeling like another’ and, in this form, it represents a kind of imprecise information about the subject’s own capacities to the subject (‘Yes, I know’, ‘I could know’, ‘We must look in this direction’) – and at times it includes the knowledge (connaissance) of certain objective relations (long, pointed, fourth primary colour, geometric figures); in a word, it is an ambiguous consciousness that is given as empty consciousness aimed at a relational structure and at the same time as a full consciousness of a state of the subject.

Imaging knowledge, on the contrary, is a consciousness that seeks to transcend itself, to posit the relation as an outside. Not, to tell the truth, by affirming its truth: we would have only a judgement. But in positing its content as existent through a certain density of the real that serves as its representative. This real, of course, is not given, even in the indifferent and very general form of ‘something’. It is only aimed at. Imaging knowledge presents itself therefore as an effort to determine the ‘something’, as a will to reach the intuitive, as a waiting for images.

Let us return to the consciousness of the reader. The sentences of the novel are soaked with imaging knowledge; it is these that I apprehend on the words, not simple significations: the syntheses that, as we have seen, constitute from page to page an objective sphere of signification will not be simple syntheses of relations; they will be syntheses of something that has this or that quality with something that possesses such-and-such a characteristic. The relations do not order themselves so as to compose the denotation of a concept; the rule of their synthesis is that there must be between them relations as are between various qualities of an object. For example, Pierre’s office becomes something that is in the building; and the building becomes something that is in Emile-Zola Street.²²

There follows a curious alteration in the role of signs. These, as we know, are perceived globally in the form of words and each word has its own physiognomy. Roughly, we can say that the words, for the reader of a novel, play the role of signs, whose principal characteristics we have given in Part I. But imaging knowledge tends too strongly towards an intuition that will fulfil it not to attempt, at least from time to time, to make the sign play the role of representative of the object: it then uses the sign like a drawing. The physiognomy of the word becomes representative of that of the object. A real contamination occurs. When I read ‘this beautiful person’, no doubt and above all, the words signify a certain young woman, the heroine of the novel. But they represent in a certain degree the beauty of the young woman; they play the role of this something that is a beautiful young woman. This is more frequent than we believe. Dwelshauvers cites curious examples that confirm our thesis.²³ He presents pairs of words to the subject who is to report awareness of an agreement or disagreement between the two terms. Admittedly, the attitude of the subject is different from that of a reader of a novel. However, the words already and rather frequently play the role of representatives:

On presenting the pair Sympathy–Pity, the subject reacts with the implicit thought that there is not an agreement. Immediately after this reaction, the subject analyses this response and finds nothing to justify it. At the end of the series of experiments, in remembering this reaction, the subject seems to remember that the letter T was more detached from the others in the word Sympathy than in the word Pity. A feeling of disagreement was produced between these letters and the aspect of the words.

It is therefore no longer a question of empty imaging knowledge: the word often plays the role of representative without ceasing to play the role of a sign and we are dealing, in reading, with a hybrid consciousness, half-sign and half-imaging.

Imaging knowledge is not necessarily preceded by pure knowledge. In many cases (and for example in reading novels) the objects of knowledge are initially given as correlates of an imaging knowledge. Pure knowledge, which is to say simple knowledge (connaissance) of relations, comes next. In certain cases, which we shall study later, pure knowledge is presented as an ideal that is never reached. In such a case consciousness is captive to its imaging attitude.

Things are given initially as presences. If we start from knowledge, we see the image born from an effort of thought to make contact with presences. This birth coincides with a degradation of knowledge that no longer aims at relations as such but as substantial qualities of things. This empty imaging knowledge – which Spaier names the dawn of images – is very frequent in the life of consciousness. It passes and disappears without being realized in images, but not without having put us, however, on the side of the image properly called. The subject does not then knowledge whether it was a ‘flash-image’, a ‘dawn of an image’, or a concept.

II. AFFECTIVITY

It is necessary first of all to present some remarks on the deep nature of affectivity. Works like those of Brentano, Husserl, and Scheler have established in Germany a certain conception of feeling that French psychologists would gain from knowing. To tell the truth, on the subject of affectivity French psychology remains contemporary with Ribot.²⁴ If we open the new treatise by Dumas, we find old and fastidious discussions of the peripheral thesis and the intellectualist thesis. Since James and Nahlowsky the physiology of affectivity has made some progress. But the feeling itself is no better known.²⁵ Dwelshauvers correctly summarizes general opinion when he says of the affective state that ‘it is lived’. This expression, like the comments on it, has the effect of radically severing the feeling from its object. Feeling is presented as a kind of purely subjective and ineffable shiver, which indeed has an individual tonality but which remains enclosed within the subject who experiences it. At bottom, it is indeed simply becoming conscious of organic modifications. Nothing more. It is pure subjectivity, pure interiority. From there spring all theses that make affectivity a primitive stage of psychic development: at that stage the world of things does not yet exist – neither besides that the correlative world of persons. There exist only lived states, a flux of subjective, inexpressible qualities. At the limit affectivity is confounded with coenaesthesia. It is no doubt recognized that the affective states are usually linked with representations. But these links are established from the outside. It is not a case of a living synthesis of representation and feeling: we remain in the mechanical domain of associations. Transference, condensation, derivation, sublimation: so many tricks of associationist psychology. Literature is no more advanced: in reaction against the old and profound Pascalian theory of love-esteem, the writers of the nineteenth century have made of feelings an ensemble of capricious appearances that are sometimes fortuitously united with representations but which at bottom have no real relation with their objects. Better still, feelings have no objects. The link between my love and the loved person is for Proust and for his disciples at bottom just a link of contiguity. There arises from there, with the psychologists and the novelists, a sort of solipsism of affectivity. The reason for these strange conceptions is that the feeling has been isolated from its signification.

There do not exist, in fact, affective states, which is to say inert contents that are carried by the stream of consciousness and are sometimes fixed, by chance of contiguity, to the representations. Reflection delivers us affective consciousnesses. Joy, anguish, melancholy are consciousnesses. And we must apply to them the great law of consciousness: all consciousness is consciousness of something. In a word, feelings have special intentionalities, they represent a way – among others – of transcending. Hate is hate of someone, love is love of someone. James said: remove the psychological manifestations of hate, of indignation and you have no more than abstract judgements, affectivity having vanished. We can respond today: try to bring about in yourself the subjective phenomena of hate, of indignation without these phenomena being oriented on a hated person, on an unjust action, and you can tremble, hammer your fists, blush, but your inner state will be devoid of indignation, of hate. To hate Paul is to intend Paul as a transcendent object of a consciousness. But we must not commit the intellectualist error and believe that Paul is present as the object of an intellectual representation. Feeling aims at an object but it aims in its own manner, which is affective. Classical psychology (and even La Rochefoucauld) holds that feeling appears in consciousness as a certain subjective tonality. This is to confuse the reflective consciousness and the unreflective consciousness. Feeling is given as such to the reflective consciousness, the meaning of which is precisely to be consciousness of this feeling. But the feeling of hate is not consciousness of hate. It is consciousness of Paul as hateful; love is not, primarily, consciousness of itself: it is consciousness of the charms of the loved person. To become conscious of Paul as hateful, irritable, sympathetic, disturbing, attractive, repulsive, etc., is to confer on him a new quality, to constitute him along a new dimension. In a sense these qualities are not properties of the object and, at bottom, the very term ‘quality’ is improper. It would be better to say that they make the sense of the object, that they are the affective structure: they entirely permeate the object; when they disappear – as in the case of depersonalization – perception remains intact, things are not touched, and yet the world is singularly impoverished. In a sense feeling is therefore given as a species of knowledge (connaissance). If I love the long, white, fine hands of that person, this love, which is directed on the hands, could be considered as one of the ways that they have appeared to my consciousness. It is indeed a feeling that aims at their finesse, their whiteness, the vivacity of their movements: what would a love mean which was not a love of these qualities? It is therefore a certain way that finesse, whiteness, vivacity have of appearing to me. But it is not an intellectual knowledge (connaissance). To love fine hands is a certain way, one might say, of loving finesse on these hands. Still love does not intend the finesse of the fingers, which is a representative quality: it projects on the object a certain tonality that one could call the affective sense of that finesse, of that whiteness. Lawrence excels in suggesting, while he seems only to be describing the form and colour of objects, these subdued affective structures that constitute their deepest reality. Here is, for example, an English woman who has succumbed to the strange charm of the Indians:

It was always the one man who spoke. He was young, with quick, large, bright black eyes that glanced sideways at her. He had a soft black moustache on his dark face, and a sparse tuft of beard, loose hairs on his chin. His long black hair, full of life, hung unrestrained on his shoulders. Dark as he was, he did not look as if he had washed lately.²⁶

The representative retains a kind of primacy. The vivacious, white, and fine hands appear first as a purely representative complex and then determine an affective consciousness that confers new meaning on them. One can ask, in these conditions, what happens when we produce an affective consciousness in the absence of the object they aim at?

We are inclined at first to exaggerate the primacy of the representative. One affirms that there must always be a representation to provoke the feeling. Nothing is more false. First, the feeling can be provoked by another feeling. Further, in the very case where there is a representation to awaken it there is nothing to say that it will be aimed at this representation. If I enter the room where my friend Pierre lives, the sight of the well-known (connus) items of furniture can undoubtedly determine me to produce an affective consciousness that is directed directly at them. But it can also provoke a feeling that aims at Pierre himself, to the exclusion of every other object. The problem remains entirely.

I suppose therefore that, in the absence of a certain person, the feeling reappears, which is inspired in me by her beautiful white hands. Let us suppose for greater clarity that the feeling is pure of all knowledge. This is evidently a limiting case, but one that we have the right to imagine.

This feeling is not a pure, subjective content, it does not escape the law of all consciousness: it transcends itself; one finds there, on analysis, a primary content that comes to animate intentionalities of a very particular type; briefly, it is an affective consciousness of those hands. Only, this consciousness does not posit the hands that it aims at, as hands, which is to say as a synthesis of representations. Knowledge and sensible representations are lacking (by hypothesis). It is rather consciousness of something fine, graceful, pure, with a strictly individual nuance of finesse and purity. No doubt what is unique for me in those hands – and which cannot be expressed in knowledge, even imaging – the tint of the skin at the fingertips, the shape of the fingernails, the small wrinkles around the phalanx, all these appear to me. But these details do not deliver themselves in their representative aspect: I become conscious of them as an undifferentiated mass not amenable to any description. And this affective mass has a character that is lacking in clear and complete knowledge: it is present. In fact, the feeling is present and the affective structure of the objects is constituted in correlation with a determinate affective consciousness. A feeling is therefore not an empty consciousness: it is already possession. These hands are given to me in their affective form.

Let us suppose now that my feeling is not a simple affective recall of those hands; suppose that I also desire them. The desire is, of course, at first consciousness of the object of desire: how else could I desire? But – if we suppose this to be pure of all knowledge – it could not entail knowledge (connaissance) of its object, it cannot, by itself alone, posit it like a representation. The desire must therefore be added, in a new synthesis, to the affective consciousness of its object. In a sense, as a result, the desire is already possession; for in order to desire those hands, the desire must posit them in their affective form, and it is on this affective equivalent that the desire is directed. But it does not know (connaît) them as hands. It is thus that, after a tiring and sleepless night, I feel arising in me a very definite desire. Affectively its object is strictly determined, one cannot be tricked: only, I do not knowledge what it is. Do I want to drink something warm and sweet; do I want to sleep, or is it sexual desire? In vain, each time, I exhaust myself in hypotheses. It must be, to tell the truth, that I am the victim of an illusion: a consciousness arising on the ground of fatigue and taking the form of desire. That desire, of course, posits an object; but this object does not exist except as the correlate of a certain affective consciousness: it is neither drink, nor sleep, nor anything real and all effort to define it is by nature doomed to failure.

In a word the desire is a blind effort to possess on the representative plane what is already given to me on the affective plane; through the affective synthesis, it aims at a beyond that it senses without being able to know (connaître); it is directed at the affective ‘something’ that is now given to it and apprehends it as representative of the desired thing. So the structure of an affective consciousness of desire is already that of an imaging consciousness, since, as in the image, a present synthesis functions as a substitute for an absent representative synthesis.

Under the name of ‘theory of constellations’ or of ‘law of interest’, a certain psychological theory, which one finds even in the books of Ribot, represents feeling as effecting a choice between constellations of images and attracting into consciousness those that will fix it. It is thus that Hesnard could write:

Every affective wave in a being capable of consciousness, tends to stir up an image that justifies it; every feeling linked to an external object tends to justify itself, to express itself by the internal representation of that object.

Thus the image is a radical psychic formation heterogeneous with affective states, but most affective states are accompanied by images, the image representing for the desire what is desired. This theory accumulates errors: confusion of the image with its object, illusion of immanence, negation of affective intentionality, total misunderstanding of the nature of consciousness. In fact, as we have just seen, the image is a kind of ideal for the feeling, it represents for the affective consciousness a limiting state, the state in which desire is at the same time knowledge (connaissance). The image, if it is given as the lower limit towards which knowledge tends when it is degraded, is also presented as the upper limit towards which affectivity tends when it seeks to know (connaître) itself. Is the image not a synthesis of affectivity and knowledge?

To properly conceive the nature of this type of synthesis it is necessary to renounce comparisons drawn from physical mixtures: a knowing consciousness that is at the same time an affective consciousness does not have one part knowledge and one part feeling. A consciousness is always transparent to itself; it must therefore be, at the same time, entirely knowledge and entirely affectivity.

Let us return to those beautiful white hands: if, instead of a pure affective consciousness, I produce a cognitive-affective consciousness, those hands are at once the object of knowledge and of feeling, or rather they are posited by an affectivity that is knowledge (savoir), a knowledge (connaissance) that is feeling. Desire posits an object, which is the affective equivalent of those hands: something transcendent, something that is not me is given as correlative to my consciousness. But at the same time, that something comes to be filled (remplir) with an imaging knowledge, which is to say I am invaded by the knowledge (connaissance) that this something stands for ‘two hands’. This certainty appears to me suddenly: in relation to this affective object, I find myself in the attitude of quasi-observation. They are indeed there, those hands: the knowledge that penetrates them gives them to me as ‘hands of this person, white hands, etc.’, at the same time the feeling reproduces on the affective plane what there is of the ineffable in the sensations of white, of finesse, etc.; it gives that empty knowledge the opacity that was discussed in Part I. I know that the object that is there, transcendent, confronting my consciousness stands for two white and fine hands; at the same time I sense this whiteness and this finesse and especially this nature of hands always so particular. But, at the same time, I am conscious that those hands have not yet come into existence. What I have in front of me is a substitute for those hands, concrete, full but incapable of existing by itself. When that substitute is present it delivers the hands to me completely, but at the same time, it is in its nature to reclaim these hands that it posits and I am conscious of aiming at them through it. Let us recall the essential characteristic of the mental image: it is a certain way that an object has of being absent within its very presence.²⁷ We encounter this characteristic here; and indeed this affective-cognitive synthesis just described is none other than the deep structure of the image consciousness. No doubt we will encounter more complex imaging consciousnesses, others where the affective element is almost excluded: but, if we want to grasp the image at its source, we must begin with this structure. Many images, besides, contain nothing more. This is the case with all those whose object is a colour, a flavour, a landscape, a facial expression, in brief for all those that principally aim at sensible qualities other than shape and movement. Stendhal said:

I can’t see the physiognomy of events, I have only my child’s memory. I can see mental images, I remember the effects on my emotions, but, as for causes and the physiognomy, nothing … I can see a very clear succession of images, but not the physiognomy except as they appeared to me. Moreover, I can only see this physiognomy thanks to the memory of the effect it produced in me.²⁸

III. MOVEMENTS

Many authors have highlighted the close relation that exists between images and movements. Guillaume, in his thesis has shown how the image gradually becomes‘the motor cause of movements’ and, at the same time, ‘the element of control’.²⁹ The experiments of Dwelshauvers seem to prove that there is no image without an ensemble of very slight movements (trembling of the fingers, etc.).³⁰ But all these observations tend only to present the image as a condition of movement. We want to know if inversely the movements, which is to say finally kinaesthetic sensations, do not play an essential role in the constitution of the image.

Piéron’s interesting research affords us our point of departure.³¹ He presented his subjects with a figure constituted by a tangle of lines and later asked them to draw the figure from memory. Here are some of the notes he made:

M. Sp. From the fourth presentation he looks methodically. He wishes to make verbal remarks, but does not have time, so he uses the movements of his eyes and reproduces the lines according to his eye movements. After observation of his behaviour, he looks with his eye movements following the lines and accompanied by synergistic movements of the hands outlining the copy of the lines … some words uttered softly (‘there!’, ‘good’) punctuate certain rulings corresponding to an observation, to a remark not explicitly formulated…

M. To … On the first presentation, he is surprised by the very large number of lines and the difficulty of seeing them well; the moment the test disappears, he has the impression that the image remains and makes an effort to draw it very quickly but it vanishes so fast that he fails to use it. The first few times he only looks at the big lines, and on the second presentation does not recognize the test. He knows, because he has made a mental note of it, that here and there are small lines, but he no longer knows their direction. Little by little he augments his knowledge with observations, remarks (here an acute angle, there two lines almost parallel, one line a little bigger than the other …, etc.). When observed, he appears to follow the lines by movements of his head, with very slight ocular displacements and by movements of the hand.

M. Fa … He tries to make geometrical remarks, soon noticing a little triangle in the left part of the test but he does not manage to find the necessary ‘tricks’. He counts the lines, remarks on their convergence, their parallelism, etc. He looks from afar with small eye movements … In the reproduction, at the end of a week, one notices the deforming influence of the geometric schematization: the principal lines are grouped as a rhombus…

So these observers who wish to reproduce the figure indicate with mnemonic movements or remarks that are finally reduced to rules for effecting certain movements. Later, when the subjects will form an imaging consciousness of this figure, these movements, sketchily or completely realized, will serve as the basis of the image.

Now the object was presented to them by visual perceptions. Since, in principle, we are informed in a direct way of the movements of our body by a special type of sensations, kinaesthetic sensations, a question is posed: ‘How can the kinaesthetic sensations function as matter for an imaging consciousness that aims at an object furnished by visual perceptions?’

The fact itself is not doubtful: Dwelshauvers highlighted it by a whole series of experiments. He concluded:³²

There exist mental images that are the conscious translation of muscular attitudes. These attitudes are not perceived by the subject, but they give rise in the consciousness of the subject to an image very different from themselves. In other words, it happens that the genesis of our mental images is as follows: 1. Idea of a movement to be accomplished; 2. Muscular attitude objectifying that idea, that motor intention, without the subject becoming aware of the motor reaction, of the attitude, as such; 3. Image provoked in consciousness as registering of the motor reaction and qualitatively different from the very elements of this reaction.

But no explanation has been given of these certain phenomena. Even the way that Dwelshauvers describes them is far from being satisfactory. We will try in our turn to expose the facts and, if possible, to explain them.

My eyes are open, I look at the index finger of my right hand, which is describing curves, geometrical figures in the air. To a certain extent, I see these curves at the end of my finger. From the outset, indeed, a certain persistence of retinal impressions causes a kind of wake to continue to subsist, there where my index finger is already no longer. But this is not all: the different positions of my finger are not given as successive and isolated. No doubt each position is a concrete and irreducible present. But these presents are not associated from outside as simple contents of consciousness. They are intimately united by synthetic acts of mind. Husserl has given a remarkable description of these particular intentions which, starting from a living and concrete ‘now’, are directed towards the immediate past to retain it and towards the future to grasp it. He calls these ‘retentions’ and ‘protentions’.³³ This retention, which itself alone constitutes the continuity, is not itself an image. It is an empty intention which is directed towards the phase of the movement that has just been annihilated; we say, in psychological language, that it is knowledge centred on the present visual sensation, and which makes appear that now as also being an after of a certain quality, an after that does not follow any sensation except precisely the one that has just vanished. The protention, on its part, is an expectation and this expectation gives the same sensation as also being a before. Naturally this latter is not as strictly determined as a ‘before’ as it is as an ‘after’, since – except in the privileged case when we execute a movement defined beforehand – the sensation that will follow is not entirely known (connue); but this sensation is already pretraced by a very precise expectation: I expect a visual-sensation-produced-by-a-movement-of-my-index-finger beginning from a definite position. Retention and protention constitute, in every way, the sense of the present visual impression: without these synthetic acts, one could hardly speak of an impression at all; this before and this after that are correlates of these acts are not given as empty forms, as homogeneous and indifferent structures: they are the concrete and individual relations that the current sensation sustains with the concrete and individual impressions that have preceded it and that will follow it.

But we must be precise: all consciousness is consciousness of something. I earlier described retention and protention as aiming at impressions for simplification. What they really aim at are objects constructed from those impressions, which is to say the trajectory of my index finger. This trajectory naturally appears as a static form; it is given as the path traversed by my finger and, more vaguely, beyond its current position, as the path still to be traversed. The path traversed – or a part of that path – is presented moreover as a vague luminous trail, produced by the persistence of the impressions on the retina.

These visual impressions that constitute an immobile form are joined by properly kinaesthetic sensations (of skin, muscles, tendons, joints) that silently accompany them. They represent more feeble elements entirely dominated and even denatured by the firm and clear perceptions of vision. They are, without any doubt, the support of retentions and protentions: but these secondary intentions are strictly subordinated to the retentions and protentions that aim at the impressions of vision. Since, otherwise, there exists no kinaesthetic persistence, they are immediately effaced.

Now I close my eyes and, with my finger, I execute movements similar to the preceding ones. One might suppose that the kinaesthetic impressions, delivered from visual domination, would appear with force and clarity. But there is none of it. No doubt the visual sensation has disappeared, but we also notice the disappearance of the kinaesthetic sensation. What arises in our consciousness is the trajectory of movement as a form in the making. If I trace a figure of eight with the tip of my index finger, what appears to me is that figure of eight in the process of being constituted, a little like the letters of a cinema advert forming themselves on the screen. Certainly, this form is given at the tip of my finger. But it does not appear as a kinaesthetic form. It appears as a visual figure.

But this visual figure, we have seen, is not given by the visual sensations: it is presented as that which I could see at the tip of my finger if I opened my eyes; it is a visual form as imaged. One might perhaps be inclined to say, with Dwelshauvers, that the movement evokes the image. But this interpretation is not acceptable: the image is directly apprehended at the tip of my finger. Moreover – as we cannot admit that the movement evokes the image while itself remaining unconscious³⁴ – the kinaesthetic sensations, on this hypothesis, must subsist alongside the image they evoke. However they have even less independence than when they are masked by authentic visual impressions: it is as though they are absorbed by the image and, if one makes an effort to recover them, their appearance is accompanied by the disappearance of the image. Will we then simply say that the kinaesthetic impressions function as analogical substitutes for the visual form? It would at once be more to the point and, moreover, the case already met when we studied the role of eye movements in the apprehension of schematic drawings. But, presented this way, this analogical substitution appears barely comprehensible. It is a little like being told that goats function as analogical substitutes for seaplanes. Besides, if we observe ourselves, we will notice that the image persists once the movement stops, which is to say it survives the last kinaesthetic impression, and seems to remain for a few moments in the very places where my finger moved. It is therefore appropriate, if we do not want to settle for words, to study more closely the mechanism of this substitution.

To tell the truth the problem would be insoluble if the impressions that constitute the perception of movement were given all at once. But, precisely, their characteristic is to never appear except one after another. Moreover, none is given as an isolated content: they are each presented as the current state of movement. We have seen, indeed, that every visual impression is like the point of application of a retention and a protention that determined its place in the continuity of forms described by the movement. The kinaesthetic impressions are also unified by the retentional and protentional acts. If these acts aim only to retain and to foresee the states of the movement that have disappeared or are yet to come under their forms as kinaesthetic impressions, we would have, in the end, a kinaesthetic perception, which is to say consciousness of an actually existing motor form.

But that is most often not the case. Generally, the visual impressions prevail over the vague and feeble kinaesthetic impressions. Even when absent, they impose and I still seek them; they alone can serve as regulators: Dwelshauvers has shown that subjects who are asked to trace two equal lines with their eyes closed guide themselves by visual representations of their extremities. What happens most often, consequently, is that the retention and protention retain and anticipate the disappeared and future phases of movement under the aspect that they would have had if I had perceived them by the organs of sight. It is a matter, naturally, of a pure knowledge of a degraded sort that we described above. It must nonetheless be admitted that consciousness takes from the very start a sui generis attitude: all retention is at the same time, here, conversion of kinaesthetic into visual, and this conversional retention would itself merit a phenomenological description. It is easier to imagine what protention could be because the future impression does not need to be converted; consciousness, at every moment, expects a visual sensation beginning from the present sensible content.

What does the concrete impression, support of these intentions, become? It is, by nature, kinaesthetic; it therefore cannot be given visually. But it is apprehended, nevertheless, as an ‘after’ of a very particular quality: it is the result, the extreme point of a past that is given as visual. At the same time it is presented as the current moment in a series of contents that is prolonged into the future. So, on the one hand, it is the only concrete element of intended form, conferring on this form its character of presence, which supplies the degraded knowledge of the ‘something’ at which it aims. But, on the other hand, it derives its sense, its range, its value, from the intentions that aim at visual impressions: it was itself expected and received as a visual impression. Certainly, this is not enough to make a visual sensation, but no more is needed to give it a visual sense: this kinaesthetic impression provided with a visual sense functions therefore as an analogon of a visual form and, when it slides into the past, it will do so as a visual impression. Nevertheless time flows on, the movement reaches its end. The retentional knowledge has increased considerably; it is by virtue of this that the greater part of the visual trajectory is aimed at. But it always takes the present sensation as its point of departure; this alone confers on it a kind of reality. When the last impression has disappeared there will still remain, as a wake, an imaging knowledge conscious of having been filled (rempli) and then, for lack of support, this last trace disappears: it is then a total retention.

We have supposed up to now that the gestures of my hand have been accomplished by chance: in that case knowledge is exactly contemporaneous with the movement. But we can conceive of cases where the knowledge is given before the movement. Then the movement performs the function of making the knowledge explicit. At first the form is empty and incompletely differentiated. Gradually the protentional knowledge changes into retention; it becomes clearer and more precise; at the same time it aims at a concrete impression which has just existed. The relation between the protention and the retention becomes a relation of equivalence, and then is reversed. This slow clarification of knowledge, which cannot operate without a present sensation falling into the past on this occasion, ends by giving a direction to the movement: the phenomenon as a whole is irreversible. This is what is produced when I decide to trace a figure of eight with my finger. It is also the case in the symbolic schemas of Flach.³⁵ These determinations of pure space (straight lines, curves, angles, loops, etc.) are produced, in my opinion, by the kinaesthetic impressions functioning as an analogon and provoked by the displacement of the eyeballs. The forms – being initially aimed at by a vague knowledge, which gains in precision as it is reversed from future to past – are given naturally as static. That figure of eight described by my finger is there, in space: it is not moving; it just exists. But my intention can vary in accordance with the cases: I can deliberately aim at the form as such. In that case the concrete impression, the ‘now’ is apprehended only as that which converted the protention into retention, or rather – since our consciousness is directed towards the object – that which makes the form pass from potential to actual. I can also aim more particularly at the instantaneous concrete impression: retention and protention – although they continue to play their crucial role – appear here as subordinate to the impression. This impression is given as the moving body that moves along an actually existing figure. There exist intermediary cases (and they are the majority) in which it is the moving body that, in its movement through the form, makes the form pass from potential to actual. All of this description holds equally for what I will call the passive perception of movement, which is to say for the perception of the figure traced by someone’s finger on my palm or on my cheek. Here also there is visualization of movement. I was able to confirm this during a small investigation that I made: the subject was asked, with closed eyes, to guess the form that I traced on the palm of the subject’s hand: ‘it is a Z’, one subject said, ‘I see the form at the end of your index finger’.

In the cases that we have just studied, the moving body describes the figure completely. But if the subject knows in advance the figure that it will trace, often that subject is content with a simple motor indication. It is what the psychologists have called ‘sketchy movement’,‘outline movement’,‘subdued movement’. These expressions, especially the third, are very obscure. But the phenomena studied under their names are susceptible, so it seems to me, to receiving very simple explanations. Remember first of all that all consciousness of movement or of a figure traced by a movement is constituted – except at the initial moment and the terminal moment – by a concrete impression, a sensible intuition that separates a retention from a protention. To realize an empty knowledge of movement or of form is therefore, at bottom, to create inside this knowledge two directions, one by which it turns towards the past to retain it, the other by which it aims at the future to anticipate it. To bring about this differentiation within knowledge requires no more than an instantaneous impression or, since instantaneity is a limiting idea, at least a very brief period of real movement.

This movement is not necessarily given as the initial phase of movement. Let us suppose, for example, that I want to produce the image of a figure of eight. My intention at first includes an undifferentiated imaging knowledge. This knowledge contains that of a loop that appears one moment as an empty imaging intention. I then make a slight eye movement from a to b, in synthetic connection with the empty knowledge of the preceding moment and which is given to me as, for example, one of the parts of the figure of eight. At that moment what was pure imaging knowledge of a loop becomes retention and slides into the past. The movement however does not last long, but its sense survives it: it stops at b but at b it is given as ‘start of a loop’ and, beginning with this concrete impression, a protention of the loop shoots towards the future. That is to say, I grasp the movement described as being carried out along part of the loop, which is enough to make the pure imaging knowledge of the loop pass into the retentional state and, at the same time, I protend a loop beyond b; the loops are given as irreal existents beyond and on this side of my real movement. Beginning with b I make a new eye movement from b to c. The movement b–c is given at once as prolonging loop 1 and as being carried out along loop 2, which then becomes the object of an imaging protention, which is to say that this loop 2 becomes the sense of my movement; I can grasp that movement only to the extent that it operates along a loop as imaged. It follows that, having really effected the angular movement a–b–c, I have apprehended that movement in overloading it with a retentional and protentional meaning of ‘figure of eight’. If I were to apprehend the movement as a real movement, it would be given to me as a movement

operated along a figure of eight as imaged, but if on the other hand I aimed at the figure of eight as a static form through the movement, it would naturally be this form alone that would be irreally visualized on the real kinaesthetic impression.

It is time to draw some conclusions from this collection of remarks. We will see presently that movement can play the role of an analogon for an imaging consciousness. This is because, when a movement is given by a sense other than sight, the consciousness that apprehends it has an imaging structure and not a perceptual one. No doubt this imaging consciousness is simpler than those that we are about to study: but it is originary. That is to say, originally, there is made or can be made a fourfold substitution:

1 A succession of kinaesthetic (or tactile) impressions can function as an analogon for a succession of visual impressions.

2 A movement (given as a kinaesthetic series) can function as an analogon for the trajectory that the moving body describes or is supposed to describe, which means that a kinaesthetic series can function as an analogical substitute for a visual form.

3 A very small phase of the movement (for example, a very slight muscular contraction) can suffice to represent the entire movement.

4 The muscle that contracts is not always the one that would come into play if the intended movement as imaged had really occurred.

We can now approach the problem that interests us: how can the movement assume for the imaging consciousness the role of analogical substitute of the object? We foresee the solution immediately: since the structure of the consciousness of the movement is imaging, it undergoes no modification when the image is richer. The kinaesthetic impression that already represents a visual form will simply function as representative of more complex objects: more will be demanded of it because the knowledge aims at a larger number of qualities. We have seen, in Part I, Chapter 2, § IV, how an increasingly greater knowledge flows into the ‘symbolic movements’ that we effect in looking at a schematic drawing. It is the same here: the role of movement has not changed from one case to the other; in the first, it functioned as an analogon on the lines of the drawing; in the second, these lines are absent and the movement is no longer revealed to us by visual sensations; but its role remains the same. In a word, if we form the image of an object, the kinaesthetic impressions that accompany certain contractions, certain voluntary movements of the organs, can always serve as substitutes for a visual form. But this visual form will now have a wider meaning: it could be the form of my fist, of an inkpot, of a letter of the alphabet; in brief, the form of an object. It is thus that, some years ago, when I tried to represent to myself a swing animated by a lively movement, I had the clear impression that I was moving my eyeballs slightly. I then tried to represent a moving swing while keeping my eyeballs still. I therefore forced myself to direct my gaze at the page number of a book. Then this happened: either my eyes moved again in spite of me, or I could not at all represent to myself the movement of the swing. The case is very simple: we have indicated it above. This is a case neither of a pure static form nor of pure shifting of a moving body. The moving body (represented by the present kinaesthetic impression) must be conceived as making the figure (the arc of the circle) pass from potentiality to actuality. Only, the moving body was not simply an indeterminate moving body: it was moreover apprehended as the analogon of a swing.

We are here thus in the presence of two analogical matters for an imaging consciousness: the kinaesthetic impression, with its cortège of protentions and retentions, and the affective object. To tell the truth, these two matters do not duplicate activity. The affective substitute is transcendent but not external, it gives us the nature of the object in its fullest and inexpressible nature. The kinaesthetic substitute is at once transcendent and external: it yields nothing that is very deep, but it is through it that we apprehend the form of the object as differentiated quality, it is that which ‘externalizes’ the object as imaged, which situates it, which indicates its direction and, if there are any, its movements. These two types of analogon can therefore very well exist concurrently as correlates of the same act of consciousness. Three cases can be presented:

1 The analogical correlate of imaging knowledge is the affective object. I have described this structure in the preceding section and will return to it.³⁶

2 The correlate of knowledge is the movement. We are then dealing, for most of the time, with determinations of pure space. I will discuss this later in connection with symbolic schemas and synaesthesias.³⁷

3 The complete image includes an affective analogon that makes present the object in its deep nature and a kinaesthetic analogon that externalizes it and confers a kind of visual reality upon it. At the same time, the kinaesthetic analogon, produced by some movements that are easy to retain, is an excellent little mnemonic. A subject, to whom I had shown a picture entitled ‘Return of the Soldiers from the Crimean War’, described it afterwards very correctly. When asked if he was conscious of having interpreted or described it, he replied: ‘I mainly reconstructed it in accordance with the movement of the lines.’ Shortly before this, he had said: ‘I represented the picture to myself mainly by a movement from bottom to top.’

That movement was indeed very characteristic due to a large number of bayonets, all parallel, that were represented in the picture. The subject then reported having in mind a figure formed by vertical lines joined towards the bottom by semicircles. This figure represented for him the picture. The figure was evidently of kinaesthetic origin and drew all its sense from knowledge. But it would be inexact to say that the affective object possesses externality: it is but transcendent. There is therefore no spatial relation between the two substitutes. A special act of consciousness is needed to affirm that each of the two substitutes manifests the same object in its own way. It is of course the unity of consciousness that makes the unity of the image.

If this analysis is exact and if non-visual apprehension of movement itself has an imaging structure, it should follow that our consciousness is always or nearly always accompanied by a mass of poorly differentiated representations, so that the subject cannot say whether they are kinaesthetic apprehensions or images. This is, indeed, what the experiments of the Würzburg psychologists seem to confirm. Burloud writes:

Something of this symbolism is found in the motor representations that accompany the work of thought. The representations are so obscure that the subjects are not always certain whether they are images or sensations of movement. Comings and goings of attention, movements from side to side of the head, in the research: ‘a kind of symbolic sensation of nodding the head in assent’; ‘a convulsive pressure of the jaw at the same time that the symbolic sensations (or representations) as when one turns one’s head away from something, in suppressing a thought’; ‘a motor incertitude in the hands and the posture of the body’ as when in doubt; all these phenomena are closely combined in intellectual and emotional processes. Subjects are most often unable to state whether it is consciousness of an attitude or attitudes of consciousness.³⁸

So, on this side of clear image consciousness there exists a zone of semi-darkness where there glide around rapidly almost ungraspable states, empty pieces of imaging knowledge that are almost already images, symbolic apprehensions of movement. Let one of these pieces of knowledge be fixed for a moment on one of these movements, and the imaging consciousness is born.³⁹

IV. THE ROLE OF THE WORD IN THE MENTAL IMAGE

Words are not images: the function of the acoustic or optic phenomenon that is the word resembles nothing of that other physical phenomenon, the picture. The only feature common to the sign consciousness and the image consciousness is that each, in its way, aims at an object through another object. But in the one, the interposed object functions as an analogon, which is to say it fulfils consciousness in place of another object, which is, in sum, present by proxy; in the other type of consciousness, it is limited to directing consciousness at certain objects that remain absent. So that the sign consciousness can very well remain empty, whereas the image consciousness knows (connaît) a kind of plenitude at the same time as a certain nothingness. This distinction applies fully to the mental image and inner speech. Certainly, in that domain, all is confused. While M. I. Meyerson, following the opinion of a number of psychologists, makes of the image a badly defined, unstable sign that has sense, at bottom, only for the individual, others call the word of inner speech a ‘verbal image’; thus the sign is image and the image is sign. Deep confusion results. If I produce a mental image of a horse while thinking of a horse, this image would be a sign for my thoughts. But a sign of what? Are words therefore insufficient? We might as well say that if, when contemplating a horse of flesh and blood, I form thoughts about it, that horse is a sign for my thoughts of a horse. Let us not forget, indeed, that in the mental image we are in the presence of a horse. Only, that horse has, at the same time, a kind of nothingness. It is there, as we say, by proxy. To tell the truth, the theory of the image-sign proceeds directly from the illusion of immanence. One supposes that the mental image of horse is a horse in miniature. Consequently, between the well-constituted little horse and the horse of flesh and blood, there can be only an external relation: the relation of sign to thing signified. I have tried, on the contrary, to show that there is an internal relation between the horse and its image, which I have called a relation of possession: through the analogon it is the horse itself that appears to consciousness. We will return to this as it is clear that, depending on whether one sees the image as an undisciplined sign, an outlaw in the margin of the system defined by society, or a certain way of making an absent object present, the role that one will make it play in psychic life will be completely different. In any case, we can now conclude that: in the mental image, the function of the analogon has nothing in common with that of the verbal sign in the consciousness of the word.

But reciprocally it would be an error to identify the consciousness of the word with the image consciousness. The words of inner language are not images; there are hardly any verbal images, since if the word is an image it has ceased to play the role of a sign. This is the way that I would interpret the case where the subject reported ‘seeing words written in printed characters’, ‘seeing words written in my own handwriting’. Since, as we will see, one cannot in fact read on a mental image, we should be able to admit that inner language is accompanied in these subjects, from time to time, by true auditory or visual images whose mission is to ‘presentify’ the leaves of a notebook, the pages of a book, or the total physiognomy of a word, of a phrase, etc. But the true inner language is not there: it is exclusively motor.⁴⁰ A simple remark will make us understand it better: it is often in speaking our thoughts that we get to know (connaissance) them: language prolongs them, completes them, specifies them; what was a vague ‘airy consciousness’, a more or less indeterminate knowledge takes the form of a clear and precise proposition in passing into words. So that at every moment our language – whether external or ‘internal’ – returns our thought to us more and better defined than as we gave it to language; it teaches us something. Now the mental image teaches nothing: that is the principle of quasi-observation. It cannot be allowed that an image clarifies our knowledge in any way since, precisely, it is that knowledge that constitutes it. If the language, therefore, teaches us something, this can only be by its externality. It is because the mechanisms according to which sounds and phrases are laid out are in part independent of our consciousness that we can read our thoughts on these phrases. In a phrase as imaged, on the other hand, this resistance that hardens thought and makes it precise is lacking: the image is modified to suit our knowledge, and without this resistance, the knowledge remains what it is, more or less undifferentiated. Thus a phrase as imaged is never a complete phrase, because it is not an observable phenomenon and reciprocally a phrase of language called ‘internal’ cannot be an image: the sign always retains a certain externality.

The image (mental or not) represents a full consciousness which can in no way form part of a larger consciousness. On the other hand, the sign consciousness is empty. No doubt the sign has an externality that no affective analogon has, but the intentionality of signification does not return to it: through the sign it aims at another object that is linked to the sign only by an external relation. Consequently, a signifying consciousness can very well be fulfilled, which is to say enter by virtue of its structure into a new synthesis – perceptual consciousness or image consciousness. We have seen that knowledge, when it combines with affectivity, undergoes a degradation that, precisely, permits it to be fulfilled. But the words on which it could depend do not disappear for that. They continue to play their role in the imaging consciousness: they form the articulation of knowledge, it is due to them that it leaves its primary indistinction and can go in search of a plurality of differentiated qualities in the analogon. They should not therefore be taken, as they are by Taine, for independent psychic contents that a purely associative link would reattach to the image from the outside. No doubt, they are not indispensable to its structure and there are many images without words. No doubt, too, they do not form part of consciousness properly so-called, their externality throws them onto the side of the analogon. But, first, as all knowledge tends to be expressed through words, there is a kind of verbal tendency in every image. Then, when the word is given to imaging consciousness, it is integrated into the analogon, in the synthesis of the transcendent object. Just as when I perceive the moon and I think the word ‘moon’, the word sticks to the perceived object as one of its qualities, if I produce only the imaging consciousness of the moon, the word sticks to the image. Does this mean that it will function as an analogon? Not necessarily; often the word retains its function as a sign. But it can also happen that it becomes contaminated by the interposed object and that it too is given as a representative. Nevertheless, it is to be noted that it cannot be given as representative of the real word (seen or heard) because it is itself a real word produced by real movements of the glottis. The word of inner language is not an image, it is a physical object functioning as a sign. It will therefore appear as a representative of a quality of the thing. When I produce the imaging consciousness of the moon, the word ‘moon’ can very well be given as manifesting a real quality of the object, the quality of being the moon. In that case, the word, which is a system of movements, can confer on the image that externality that it ordinarily demands of the eye, head and arm movements. The word will even represent the central core of the analogon as one could already have foreseen after what we said on the role that it played in reading novels. It would be fitting, in a more complete study, to define the relations between the old function of the sign and its new function as a representative. But this is not the place to undertake such research. It is enough for us to note that, if one gives the name of image to the total system of the imaging consciousness and its objects, it is false to say that the word is added externally: it is inside it.

V. THE MODE OF APPEARANCE OF A THING IN THE MENTAL IMAGE

The image can be defined, like the perception, by the relation of the object to a consciousness. We have tried, in the second part of this work, to describe the way that the object is given, when absent, through a presence. In the mental image the object is aimed at as a synthesis of perceptions, which is to say in corporeal and sensible form; but it appears through an affective analogon. Will that not involve profound changes in its way of appearing? This is what we must now examine.

If subjects are questioned about their images, most declare, if it is a question of images called ‘visual’, that they see them, if it is a question of ‘auditory’ images, that they hear them.⁴¹ What do they mean? We must not believe that to see signifies here to see with the eyes. It is enough, to realize this, to compare the subject’s belief in the hypnagogic image with that in the mental image. In the first case, when we believe that we see an image, that term must be understood in its full sense. The object is an external object, the hypnagogic field makes up part – or at least this what the subject believes – of real space. But, precisely, the subjects most keen to affirm that they ‘see’ their mental images have no difficulty in admitting that these have none of the characteristics of the hypnagogic image. They are not located in space. In relation to this chair, to this table in front of which I am seated, they are nowhere. As the term ‘to see’ taken in its full sense is equivalent to ‘to see in space’, the subjects cannot mean to say that the images are given to them by the eyes. Nor any more, of course, by the optic nerves or the optic centres. Taine had indeed seen that if the image is produced by a cerebral centre functioning as in perception, it must be located among the other perceptions. And his theory of reducers is the only logical consequence, on this hypothesis. Unfortunately it does not tally with the facts. The image, by nature, is given as deprived of location in real space. But then how should we understand this so frequent affirmation of the subjects, ‘I see my images’? To see an image of a dog, for example, would be to have ‘in’ consciousness a certain psychic content composed of visual sensations (colour of the coat, shape of the body, etc.), but these sensations could not be externalized and would have to be given by some means other than the visual organs. But if one removes these characteristics, what can remain of the sensations? There is here, evidently, a contradiction; it is not enough to denounce this contradiction: it seems to pertain to the nature of the image. It is therefore advisable to describe it and, if possible, to explain it.

We have seen, in the second part of this work, that one of the essential factors of the imaging consciousness is belief. This belief aims at the object of the image. All imaging consciousness has a certain positional quality in relation to its object. An imaging consciousness is, indeed, consciousness of an object as imaged and not consciousness of an image. But if we form on the basis of this imaging consciousness a second consciousness or reflective consciousness, a second species of belief appears: the belief in the existence of the image. It is at this moment that I say: I have an image of a dog, I ‘see’ the Panthéon . The contradiction of which I just spoke is a phenomenon of belief that is placed on the terrain of reflection. What does one mean when one speaks of ‘having an image’? One wants to say that one has in front of consciousness an interposed object that functions as a substitute of the thing. This belief, if it were limited there, would be justified: this object exists, it is the analogon. But the reflective belief also posits the image as a picture. What does this signify?

Let us suppose that my imaging consciousness aims at the Panthéon. As it is knowledge, it aims at the Panthéon in its sensible nature, which is to say as a Greek temple, of grey colour, with a certain number of columns and a triangular pediment. On the other hand, in a certain manner, the Panthéon aimed at is present: it is given in its affective reality. On this affective presence, my knowledge intentionality apprehends the qualities just cited. It is as if I thought: ‘This object which is in front of me, I know that it has columns, a pediment, a grey colour. All this is present in a certain form: what I sense there is the Panthéon, with its columns, its pediment, its grey colour’. But the Panthéon exists elsewhere and it is given precisely as existing elsewhere: what is present is, in some way, its absence.

So, for some moments, I was as in the presence of the Panthéon, and yet the Panthéon was not there: this is the phenomenon of possession that I have already described. But is it not natural that I try rather to logically reconstruct this impression; is it not absurd to say that I was in the presence of the absent Panthéon? These absent presences are repugnant to reason. Would it not be better to say that there was present an object very similar to the Panthéon and this object was the image? In this way what is absent remains absent, what is present entirely retains its characteristic of presence. The image will naturally be the analogon. It represented the sensible qualities of the absent object without possessing them: one will say that it had them without being the absent object. Nothing is clearer, better constructed than this illusion: to represent this grey colour, which is to say, fulfil without satisfying this consciousness reaching toward the grey, is that not to present to it a lesser grey, a grey without externality, phantasmal and keeping of the sensible only its indefinable nature of grey? Such is the origin of the illusion of immanence: in transferring to the analogon the qualities of the thing that it represents, one constitutes for the imaging consciousness a Panthéon in miniature and the reflective consciousness gives the imaging consciousness as consciousness of this miniature. The result of this construction is a mirage: I believe that the object of my consciousness is a complex of real but not externalized sensible qualities, whereas these qualities are perfectly externalized but imaginary. I believe that I can conduct myself in the face of that complex of sensible qualities as if it were any sensible object, I believe that I can read that which appears to me as imaged, count the columns of the Panthéon, describe, observe. I fall here into the illusion that constitutes the hypnagogic image, although my belief is less lively and less tenacious: with this object that I represent myself to myself as able to describe, decipher, enumerate, I can do nothing. The visible object is there, but I cannot see it – tangible and I cannot touch it – audible and I cannot hear it. Alain writes:

Many have, as they say, in their memory the image of the Panthéon and make it appear easily, or so that it seems to them. I ask them if they would please count the columns that support the pediment; but not only can they not count them but they cannot even try to. But this operation is the most simple in the world, when they have the real Panthéon before their eyes. What do they see, therefore, when the imagine the Panthéon? Do they see anything?⁴²

Alain draws the conclusion that the image does not exist. We cannot follow him: we have only wanted to show the paradoxical character of the image, to draw attention to these columns that are currently the object of my consciousness and that I cannot even try to count.

This is because the object, in the image, is given in a very particular way. The Panthéon could not appear to an imaging consciousness in the same manner as to a perceptual consciousness. It is not true that the image is, as Bergson wants it, a ‘representation whose parts are juxtaposed’. Certainly, like knowledge, an imaging consciousness aims at the external object in its externality, which is to say in as much as it is made of juxtaposed parts; but in as much as it is affectivity, it gives the object as an undifferentiated whole. At times I aim at the whiteness of the columns, greyness of the pediment as separate qualities; at times I know that the pediment is one thing and the columns another – and at times I give myself a whiteness that is greyness, columns that are pediment, a temple without parts. The object is given in images, therefore, at times as an indivisible nature in which every quality extends right through all the others, and at times as an ensemble of distinct properties, a system of fragmentary views of this primitive undifferentiation. It involves an inner contradiction, a radical defect in constitution: the characteristic of the mirage that we denounced above is our acceptance of this contradiction without clearly realizing it, which is to say without positing it for what it is.

What should however open our eyes are the frequent confusions that we are forced to commit. The reason is, indeed, that because it needs to be supported by discrete representations, the knowledge is contaminated by the syncretism of the affective object, if it were not acquired by systematic observation, if it is not clarified by words.

Three hundred and sixty-nine people were shown a picture representing a young boy with brown hair, a brown coat and blue trousers. Then they were asked to state the colours of the various objects.⁴³ Here are their answers:

(1) For the blue trousers:

(2) For the brown coat:

It is impossible to suppose that the colours ‘blue’ and ‘brown’ subsist as juxtaposed representations in the memory of the subjects: otherwise, one could not explain these curious errors. But here the knowledge, which is undecided, is carried along by affectivity. The way that the object is ‘given as blue’ in an image does not exclude an certain way of being ‘given as brown’ that remains blended in the first like a harmonic resonance. Besides, the blue, due to the circumstances, seems generally to have masked the brown. This latter was present but hidden. The knowledge is left to be decided by the stronger affective tone. The others remained in the first like a harmonic resonance. One can find in the works of Gorphe and Abramowski a mass of examples of the same order.⁴⁴

In perception, all things are given as being what they are. It must be understood by this that the thing occupies a strictly defined position in time and space and that each of its qualities is strictly determined: this is the principle of individuation. It must also be understood that the thing cannot be itself and something else at the same time and in the same relation. These two conditions are but imperfectly fulfilled by the object as imaged. Without doubt, the knowledge can expressly aim at the thing under this or that of its aspects. But a distinction must be drawn here: indeed the knowledge always aims at a certain object (or a certain class of objects) to the exclusion of all others and, consequently, it always aims at the object as one and identical. But it is extremely rare for it to aim at the object as a unique appearance in an indivisible moment of time. From this last point of view there can be agreement between the knowledge and the affectivity, whereas from the point of view of identity the affectivity must yield or a conflict arises.

1. The object of the image does not obey the principle of individuation

As I have remarked at the end of the first part, neither in consciousness of a picture, nor in that of imitation, nor in the hypnagogic image, does the object appear under an instantaneous aspect.⁴⁵ For very good reason, since that instantaneous aspect could not be revealed by the mental image: the knowledge, in this latter case as in the preceding cases, aims at, for example, Pierre with ‘his red cheeks’,‘his gay smile’, etc. For its part, affectivity could never reveal an affective equivalent for an instantaneous appearance of the object. Therefore, the Pierre that appears to me as imaged is neither aimed at nor given as the Pierre that I could perceive at the same moment, if he were present: the Pierre who is revealed by the mental image is a synthesis that contracts within itself a certain duration, often even contradictory aspects; this is also the explanation of the moving character that certain images conserve long after their object of flesh and blood has lost the power to move us.

So knowledge aims at and affectivity reveals the object with a certain coefficient of generality. But this does not necessarily prevent conflicts at the heart of the imaging consciousness, because the generality with which the object is aimed at by the knowledge is not necessarily that with which it appears through the affective analogon. For example, my knowledge intention can aim at Pierre as I saw him this morning and my affective intention can reveal to me through the analogon Pierre as he has been appearing to me for more than a week. However, as there is an identifying fusion of the two intentionalities, the Pierre of the past week is given as being the Pierre whom I saw this morning. This sadness that he had at the beginning of the week, this bad mood which yesterday rendered him so disagreeable, all this is condensed in the affective analogon and consequently all is given as being the Pierre of this morning.

There can even occur much more major shifts: the Pierre that my knowledge aims at is the one who had breakfast this morning in his dressing gown; the one revealed by the analogon is the Pierre that I saw the day before yesterday in a blue overcoat on the Place du Châtelet. And nevertheless this Pierre in overcoat is given as being Pierre in dressing gown. It is the conflict within the imaging consciousness that can explain the paradox that astonished us at the end of the second part of this work: the object of the image of Pierre, I said, is the Pierre of flesh and blood who is currently working in Berlin. But on the other hand, the image that I presently have of Pierre shows him at home, in his room in Paris, seated on an armchair that I know (connais) well. Then, one might ask, is the object of the image Pierre who currently lives in Berlin or Pierre who lived last year in Paris? And if we persist in affirming that it is the Pierre who lives in Berlin, we must explain that paradox: why and how does the imaging consciousness aim itself at the Pierre of Berlin through the one who lived last year in Paris?

What we could not explain then now seems clearer to us: the knowledge aims at the object through what the analogon provides. And the knowledge is belief: belief in finding oneself facing Pierre who is dressed in this or that fashion. But the analogon is presence. Hence these contradictory syntheses.

2.  The object of the image does not necessarily appear as obeying the principle of identity

The knowledge aims at a certain object; affectivity can provide an analogon valid for several objects: indeed, things often have unexpected affective equivalence between them and the same affective content can thus furnish a plurality of things in an undifferentiated state. This is why, in a dream, the same person can be several at once. This undifferentiated multiplicity of the image is less apparent in the wakeful state because, in wakeful formations, the knowledge imposes its mark more clearly on the affectivity. Leroy has already remarked, however, that ‘the ordinary visual representations of the wakeful state which are often so difficult to describe and even more difficult to draw, without our being able to give a good account of why, must imply contradictions of the same kind’.⁴⁶

Everyone can observe in themselves, for example, the cases that I will call facial contaminations. A face appears to us as imaged; we ask ourselves where we could have seen it, we lose ourselves in vain efforts. Finally, when the solution appears, we understand: it was two faces in an undifferentiated state, that of the employee of the bank we visited yesterday and one of a police officer we see every day at a certain crossroads. The two faces were present completely, one through the other, because of a certain resemblance and there resulted this curious formation contrary to the principle of identity: contamination. Many images are such contaminations. The other day, for example, as I wanted to evoke a red stone building found in Saint-Etienne an image appeared and I suddenly realized that it was valid for two buildings: one constructed of stone in Saint-Etienne and the other of bricks in Paris.

Even when this contamination is not in place, it often happens that the object of the image appears in a form such that it would be impossible to make it have in a perception. If I represent a thimble to myself, it is present as imaged at once as seen from outside and as seen from inside. If I clasp the arm of the armchair in my hand, a hand as imaged will surge up closed on an arm of an armchair as imaged. But this hand closed on the opaque arm, I ‘see’ from the inside, I see the palm and the inside of the fingers, as if the arm were glass. If I place the hand on my knee, I translate into a visual image the fact that I clasp at once the fabric against my palm and against my knee and the knee through the fabric: I have the image of the hand (both sides), of the fabric (both sides), and of the knee. One could multiply these examples infinitely. I will not insist. But this shows us that the image, intermediate between concept and perception, reveals to us the object under its sensible aspect but in a way that prevents it on principle from being perceptible. The image aims at it, most of the time, in its entirety, all at once. What one searches to recover in the image is not this or that aspect of a person, but the person themself, as synthesis of all their aspects. Thus children, when they draw a person in profile, nevertheless draw two eyes on the face. It is the same with the person that we evoke, we grasp them in such particular site, on such day, perhaps even in such clothes or in such an attitude. But this particular intention is accompanied by a mass of others that contradict it and alter it. So that this person, without ceasing to have this or that attitude, ends up being a complex of a mass of attitudes and aspects impossible to analyse. What is successive in perception is simultaneous in the image: and it could not be otherwise since the object as imaged is revealed at once by all our intellectual and affective experience.

At the close of these sections, where I tried to show the elements of the imaging synthesis, I believe it my duty to warn against an inexact interpretation of my thought. In indicating the principal factors of the image, I have not meant to reduce the image to the simple sum of these factors. I affirmed above, on the contrary, the irreducible reality of the image consciousness. It is by abstraction that one can separate movements, knowledge, and affectivity. And the analysis is, here, so far from being a real dismemberment that it is given only as probable. One can never effectively reduce an image to its elements, for the reason that an image, like all other psychic syntheses, is something more and different from the sum of its elements. What counts here is the new sense that penetrates the ensemble: I want to be facing Pierre, I want to believe that he is there, my entire consciousness is aimed towards him, it is ‘charmed’ in some way. And this spontaneity, this ‘intention towards’ Pierre makes a new phenomenon spring forth, to which nothing else is similar: the image consciousness. This represents a psychic form. When consciousness takes this form there results for a moment a stable appearance, then the form carried by the current disintegrates and the appearance vanishes. So far from denying, then, as do Alain, Moutier, the Behaviourists and many others, the specificity of the image, I confer on it a greater dignity, due to the fact that I do not make of it a reborn sensation but on the contrary an essential structure of consciousness, better still a psychic function. Correlatively I affirm the existence of a special class of objects of consciousness: imaginary objects.

We are far from diluting imagination in the ensemble of psychic life, further still from seeing in the image the automatic reappearance of a sensible content. For us, the image represents a certain type of consciousness, absolutely independent of the perceptual type and, correlatively, a sui generis type of existence for its objects. At the same time, in our eyes, imagination as such, which had disappeared since psychologists ceased to believe in faculties, has restored to it an importance that one could not exaggerate as one of the four or five great psychic functions. It is this function that I will now try to describe.

Part III
The Role of the Image in Psychic Life

I.  THE SYMBOL¹

The image plays neither the role of illustration nor that of support for thought. It is not something heterogeneous with thought. An imaging consciousness includes knowledge, intentions, and can include words and judgements. And by that I do not mean to say that one can judge about the image, but that judgements in a special form, the imaging form, can enter into the very structure of the image. If I want, for example, to represent to myself the staircase of a house that I have not been to for a long time, I ‘see’ at first a staircase of white stone. Several steps appear to me in a fog. But I am not satisfied, something is missing. I hesitate for a moment, I search in my memories, without leaving for that the imaging attitude; then, all at once, with the clear impression of engaging myself, of taking my responsibilities, I make a carpet with copper rods appear on the stone steps. This is here a good case of an act of my thought, of a free and spontaneous decision. But this decision did not pass through a stage of pure knowledge (connaissance) or a simple verbal formulation. The act by which I engaged myself, the act of affirmation was precisely an imaging act. My assertion consisted exactly in conferring on the object of my image the quality ‘covered by a carpet’. And I made this quality appear on the object. But this act is evidently a judgement since, as has been well shown by the research of the Würzburg school, the essential characteristic of judgement is decision. Into the imaging consciousness there enters therefore a particular type of judgement: imaging assertions. In a word (we will see later that one can even have reasoning in images, which is to say necessary connections of imaging consciousnesses) the ideational elements of an imaging consciousness are the same as those of the other consciousnesses for which one ordinarily reserves the name thoughts. The difference resides essentially in a general attitude. What one ordinarily calls thought is a consciousness that affirms this or that quality of its object but without realizing it on it. The image, on the other hand, is a consciousness that aims at producing its object: it is therefore constituted by a certain way of judging and feeling of which we do not become conscious as such but which we apprehend on the intentional object as this or that of its qualities. This can be expressed in a word: the function of the image is symbolic.

For some years much has been written, no doubt under the influence of psychoanalysis, on symbolic thought. But one is always struck by a conception that makes the image a material trace, an inanimate element that afterwards plays the role of a symbol. Most psychologists make of thought an activity of selection and organization that would fish for its images in the unconscious, to arrange and combine them according to circumstances: it remains strictly outside the images that it assembles, one could better compare it to a chess player who moves pieces on the chessboard in order to realize a certain combination. Each combination would be a symbol.

I could not accept a conception according to which the symbolic function would be added to the image from outside. It appears to me, and I hope to have made it somewhat obvious, that the image is symbolic in essence and in its very structure, that one cannot remove the symbolic function of an image without making the image itself vanish.

But what exactly is a symbol? How is the symbol distinguished from the sign or the illustration? Critical analysis of the remarkable and too little known work of Flach on ‘symbolic schemas in the process of ideation’ will perhaps allow us to respond to these questions.² Flach writes:

I have noticed that from time to time, when I wanted to clarify the data of a problem or even to comprehend some propositions that had a determined utility for my thought, there arose more or less lively representations but which always brought with them the solution of the problem, the comprehension of the phrase.

These representations appear with the act properly called comprehension. They do not accompany the simple memory of a proposition or problem. They cannot be produced at will. If one wants to make them arise, one will obtain only what Flach calls ‘illustrations of thought’ (denkillustrierungen), which is to say the ‘thin engravings’ of Binet. For a schema to appear, it must not be aimed at directly: all the subject’s effort must be concerned with the comprehension of a word or proposition. It remains to know if any act of comprehension is accompanied by a schema. Flach does not think so. He points out that schemas do not accompany efforts of intellection of the weakest intensity. ‘We have not obtained schemas when the work was too easy or when the subjects could solve the problem by recourse to memory. In similar cases, one sometimes found a verbo-motor reaction, sometimes simple illustrations.’

These schemas have an essential characteristic: they ‘have no signification of their own but only a symbolic signification’. If a subject makes a sketch of the schema that has just appeared, that sketch appears deprived of signification in the eyes of an uninformed observer. This is because these images possess all the fundamental traits necessary for an exact representation of thought in its concrete structure – and only these traits.

It is this that distinguishes them from another sort of images, that Flach calls, we have seen, ‘illustrations of thought’ and that he defines as follows:

I understand by this that what they make sensible is an illustration of the object whose relations with thought are fortuitous, external, and of a purely associative order.

One guesses that there will be, in the illustrations, at the same time more and less than in the thought.

Experiment 53: The subject asked to give a short and essential characterization of Zola has a representation of a horse race. The experimenter asks if the subject knows what relation this representation has with the characterization asked for and the subject replies that he read one day a detailed description of a race in Nana and that, since then, the image regularly emerges at the name of Zola.

Here on the other hand are some symbolic schemas, extracts from the report of Flach’s experiments. Flach presented his subjects with common terms, in general abstract, which they were to try to comprehend:

7. Exchange: I gave my thoughts the form of a ribbon. Here is a ribbon that represents the circular process of exchange. The movement of the curve is a spiral because in an exchange, the one acquires what the other loses. The inequality of the curves should express the benefit and the loss that are implied in every exchange. The ribbon appeared at once.

That schema, says Flach, is interesting as being the one which represents in logic two concepts whose extensions (or comprehensions) have a common part. But here it is a case in logic of a particular determination.

14. Compromise: it is the association of two men. I had the representation of two bodies which slide one towards the other, sideways. They had an indeterminate form but they were two bodies – one on the right, the other on the left – which swallowed one another. The body was solid and had protuberances which it pushed ahead and which disappeared the one in the other. Then there was only the one body. But what is surprising is that it did not increase considerably, it was a little larger than each of the parts but less than the two together. It was greeny-grey, it had a dirty greeny-grey colour. I made the movement at the same time with my hands.

22. Baudelaire: I saw at once in open space, on a completely dark background a splash of blue-green colour, like that of vitriol and as if it were thrown there, with a single and large stroke of the brush. The splash was longer than broad – perhaps twice as long as broad. I knew at once that this colour must express morbidity, the specific decadence that characterizes Baudelaire. I wonder if this image could apply to Wilde or Huysmans. Impossible: I sense a resistance as strong as if someone had proposed something to me that was contrary to logic. This image is valid only for Baudelaire and, from this moment on, will be representative of that poet for me.

27. Proletariat: I had a strange image, a flat and black area, and, below it, a sea vaguely rolling, an indeterminate wave, something like a dark and thick rolling of heavy waves. What did the mass signify? Extension in the entire world: something like a latent dynamism.

The schemas in general have but one sense, that of the thought that they symbolize:

This intuitive image expresses nothing other than a system of conceptual relations that are grasped while the subject sees them as the determinate relations between sensory data. Those relations, while sensory data, are presented as a priori determinations of space.

In the symbolic schemas, a thought is always grasped, due to the fact that the conceptual relations that constitute it are lived intuitively and, so far as I could ascertain, as spatial data. Whereas, in the case of illustrations of thought, space has the role of a receptacle, the background, the substrate and functions as a stage where they are placed, it has, on the other hand, when it is a case of symbolic representations, a clarificatory role: spatial determinations and figurations do not exist. Simply, they are the supports and the essential concretization of abstract relations. It is by the spatialization of these relations that one grasps the abstract content of the thought. By simple limitations, condensations, by indication of directions or by a particular rhythm of a region of space, an abstract thought can clarify its content. Here is an example: when we have asked ‘what do you understand by altru-ism?’, the subject had the representation of a direction, the fact of going towards another thing that is not given…

Flach adds that we must distinguish the preceding cases ‘from those where an ideal abstract content is as located in a determinate region of space without the thought being characterized by that location. These locations are then nothing other than points of attachment for the thought, which they tie to spatial determinations and which can thus rest on them as on real objects.’

It remains to explain the provenance of these symbolic schemas. It is here, it must be acknowledged, that Flach is most clearly insufficient. He limits himself, or nearly so, to make the symbolic schema system a creation of ‘Sphaerenbewusstsein’.³

It is, in sum, on the plane of consciousness of direction without words, that stage where we endeavour to make explicit and to externalize with words the essence of an objective content that we have precisely lived as internal and that we nevertheless possess in some kind of more or less intuitive state.

Then it sometimes happens that, in its outlines, the thought emerges as a schema from its all-inclusive wrapper.

But why does the symbolic schema appear and in which cases? How is it constituted? What relations does it have with pure knowledge, with the pure act of comprehension? What does it mean for a comprehension to be effected by the intermediary of a symbol? And just what is this symbolic function of the schema? These are the questions that Flach leaves unanswered. It is therefore necessary to resume, after him, the study of these symbolic schemas and to see whether we will not be able to draw some more and other conclusions.

* * *

We have seen that acts of easy comprehension or consciousnesses of pure and simple signification do not accompany the schemas. The schema accompanies the effort of intellection, properly so-called, and it presents in the form of a spatial object the results of that effort. Nevertheless, it would have been interesting to know if all the acts, beginning with a certain degree of difficulty, are translated into a schema, or whether there can be intellections without images. The results of Messer’s experiments permit us to complete the work of Flach on this point; there are many cases where comprehension is made without image, by simple words, in words; one can also find examples of a direct and pure comprehension without image and without words. But, in the latter case, it seems rather that the comprehension is stopped on the way, that one economized on complete development. To tell the truth what does not happen at the end is not the imaged phase: in all the cases that I have been able to study, the subjects are conscious of having economized on words. We can therefore affirm that there exist two classes of comprehension: a pure comprehension (whether or not supported by signs) and an imaged comprehension (which also may or may not make use of words). As we could not admit that this division is the effect of chance, we must suppose that there is a functional difference between these two types of comprehension. Numerous observations have, indeed, permitted us to conclude that the employment of one or other of these comprehensions was not ruled by the object. I have often noted, for example, that I can, depending on the moment, comprehend the same phrase by means of schemas or without any aid. These remarks permit us to formulate more clearly a first problem: since we have at our disposal two modes of comprehension and these two modes can find their application indifferently whatever the object of our consciousness, what are the motives that can determine consciousness to effect a comprehension of the one or the other sort? These motives must be sought in the very structure of antecedent consciousness and not in the objects. In a word an imaged comprehension always makes up part of a temporal form to be described, in which consciousness takes a certain position in relation to its object. It is this position that we must determine; we could ask ourselves for which intentional attitude of consciousness comprehension will operate in the imaged form and what is the functional relation of the symbolic schema to that attitude. But it is not easy to determine immediately the nature of this attitude and we must first look further into the concept of the symbolic schema.

One sees immediately that the symbolic schema is constituted of the elements that we have described in our second part. Knowledge, which we will have to study, penetrates and unites in a synthetic act a kinesthetic analogon to which is sometimes joined an affective analogon. These determinations of psychological space are nothing other, indeed, than impressions of movement, apprehended in imaging form. All that I have said about movements in our preceding part applies to experiments 7 and 13 that we have reported above. Experiments 14 and 21, which I also cited, show very clearly the way that the affective analogon is added in a new synthesis to the kinaesthetic analogon. The purpose of this latter is to express as clearly as possible the rational structure of the concept to be comprehended. The non-kinaesthetic element of the analogon is much less easy to characterize. It rather translates the subject’s personal reaction to the concept; but it translates it as a quality of the concept since it gives itself as a quality of the schema. In this respect experiment 14 is full of instruction:

Compromise … It was greeny-grey, it had a dirty greeny-grey colour.

According to Flach himself, this person had to give a ‘dirty’ colour to her schema because she was constrained by her surroundings to incessantly renew a compromise that appeared to her immoral and humiliating. Whatever one may think of this interpretation, which is psychoanalytic, it is in any case typical that the art of Baudelaire is symbolized by a splash, the colour of vitriol. As we have noted above, the affective analogon is given as representing ineffable sensations. In the two cases cited, it serves as substitute for a colour. The rational elements, on the other hand, are translated by a form, which is to say a movement.

The schema thus constituted, we must ask ourselves if it is true that one reads the sense of the concept or proposition to be comprehended on the schema. Flach affirms this repeatedly. ‘The essential character of these schemas is that one thinks about these images, starting from these images … the image appears first and only then the thinking … proving that I thought on the occasion of this image.’

And, to tell the truth, certain declarations of his subjects (‘At once followed the thought, which I read on the image …’) seem to authorize this. However, is this quite conceivable? If we express this thesis clearly it comes to this: the symbolic image appears first, when the subject makes the effort of comprehension – and the subject would decipher this image, and find in it just the meaning sought. The essence of the work of comprehension would therefore consist in constructing schemas.

Now it must be noted that, on this hypothesis, when the subject constructs the schema, that subject does not yet understand it. One asks how, in these conditions, one could produce a symbolic representation that can have, according to Flach’s own terms, ‘all the fundamental traits of the thought that must be comprehended’. It must be supposed that an unconscious comprehension here precedes the conscious comprehension. But then, if the image is first given and then deciphered, how could the subject interpret it correctly? We have seen, indeed, that an uninformed observer cannot comprehend a symbolic schema if he is shown a sketch of it without explanation. It is necessary therefore to suppose that the unconscious comprehension is transformed behind the schema into conscious comprehension. But the role of the schema is superfluous. Shall one say, still with Flach, that in the schema the thought is ‘intuitively lived’ before being comprehended? But the construction of the schema, once more, implies the comprehension of the thought. We do not mean, of course, that there is first comprehension and then construction. But it is very evident that the comprehension is realized in and by the construction. The structure of the concept to be comprehended serves as a rule for the elaboration of the schema and one becomes conscious of this rule by the very fact of applying it. So that, once the schema is constructed, there remains nothing more to comprehend. What could have deceived some subjects and Flach himself is that, if we do not limit ourselves to comprehend for ourselves alone, if we want to transmit by discourse the result of our activity of intellection, we must transport ourselves on to another plane and express by means of verbal signs what we have grasped as spatial relation. This transcription, which of course presupposes comprehension, nevertheless demands a slight effort of adaptation that, in certain cases, could be mistaken for comprehension itself.

All that I have just said could be expressed in a simpler way: in accordance with the phenomenological description in our first part, we could say, it is impossible to find in the image anything more than what one puts into it; in other words, the image teaches nothing. Consequently it is impossible that comprehension is operated on the image once constructed. A similar affirmation proceeds from the illusion of immanence. Actually, the image cannot have the function of aiding comprehension. But rather the comprehending consciousness can in certain cases adopt the imaging structure. The image-object appears in that case as the simple intentional correlate of the very act of comprehension.

But at what moment will comprehension take the symbolic form? For knowledge it is enough to recall the constitutional type of a symbolic schema. A schema is either a form in movement or a static form. In both cases, it is a matter of an imaging visual apprehension of kinaesthetic sensations. We have seen in the preceding part how this apprehension operates. The properly sensible element is framed, we have seen, by a protention and a retention. By the protention we are finally returned to a piece of knowledge that is given as protention and is transformed into retention as the movement flows out. The constitution of the symbolic schema returns us therefore to knowledge as its origin. What knowledge is this a matter of?

Comprehension is not pure reproduction of a signification. It is an act. This act aims at making present a certain object and this object is, in general, a truth of judgement or a conceptual structure. But this act does not begin from nothing. For example, I can indeed try to comprehend the word ‘Man’ but not its German counterpart ‘Mensch’ if I do not know German. Every word in terms of which I can make an effort to comprehend is therefore penetrated with a piece of knowledge that is none other than the memory of past comprehensions. We know that Descartes distinguished ideas and memories of ideas. Knowledge is a kind of memory of ideas. It is empty, it implies past and future comprehensions but itself is not a comprehension. It is evident that, when Flach gives his subjects words to comprehend, the comprehension operated beginning with this knowledge: it is accomplished as a passage from knowledge to act. It is therefore at the level of knowledge that the nature of the comprehension is decided. In accordance with the intention through the knowledge, this comprehension will be imaging or not, which is to say the knowledge will or will not change into a protention, followed by a symbolic movement. In a word, the essential factor that we have to describe is this intentionality that appears in the knowledge and that finally constructs the symbolic schema. Why does it degrade the knowledge?

Is it to facilitate comprehension? We have already answered above: the image teaches nothing. Comprehension is realized as imaged but not by the image. We will see in the following section that the schema, far from aiding intellection, often slows and deviates it. But if we return to analysis of Flach’s experiments, perhaps we could comprehend the function of the image.

We refer for our example to experiment 27. The subject that must comprehend the word ‘proletariat’ represents ‘aflat and black area, and, below it, a sea vaguely rolling’. What could lead us into error and what seems to have deceived Flach is a bad interpretation of the notion of a symbol. Flach indeed seems to believe that the schema is the symbol of the proletariat, which is to say that the subject, in producing that symbol, had the intention to represent, by the lines and the colours, the thought. This image would therefore be given as a schematic representation of the content of the idea ‘proletariat’, as a means to make an inventory of that content. In other words, the image would still be a sign. But one can object first that on this conception one cannot see any interest that a subject could have in effecting such a construction. Next, and especially, it is enough to produce in oneself one of these schemas and as observer to note that they do not at all have this role of sign and representative. Without doubt, there is in the schema a representative: it is the affective-motor analogon through which we apprehend the shape and its colour. But the schema itself is an analogon no more: it is itself an object having a sense. This ‘flat and black area’ with this ‘sea vaguely rolling’ is neither a sign nor a symbol for the proletariat. It is the proletariat in person. We reach here the true sense of the symbolic schema: the schema is the object of our thought giving itself to our consciousness. Thus the function of the schema as such is not at all to aid comprehension; it functions neither as expression nor as support nor as exemplification. I willingly say, using an indispensable neologism, that the role of the schema is as presentifier.

At the start of our second part, we defined pure knowledge as consciousness of a rule. But, we added, it is ‘an ambiguous consciousness that is given at once as empty consciousness of a relational structure of the object and as full consciousness of a state of the subject’. In a word, just as we have called it pre-objective, one can name it pre-reflective. Indeed it brings the subject information of that subject’s own capacities (‘Yes, I know’, ‘I could know’, etc.) but this does not appear fully as a spontaneous activity of ideation and the relation that it has to the object of knowledge appears sometimes as an objective relation, sometimes as a rule for obtaining thoughts. This state without equilibrium can degrade in imaging knowledge: in that case all reflection disappears. It can also become pure reflective consciousness, which is to say posit itself for itself as consciousness of a rule. In that case the sense of a word would be grasped on the reflective plane as the content of a concept and the sense of a phrase as judgement. Still on this plane, reasoning appears as a succession of thoughts generated from deeper in their inwardness, premises appear as the operating rules for forming the conclusion and psychic motivation is clothed in the following form: ‘if I posit that A implies B and that B implies C I must in order to remain in agreement with myself posit that A implies C’. It is indeed in considering the reflective character of classical reasoning that formal logic is defined as the study of the conditions of ‘the agreement of the mind with itself’. All this ideational activity is driven on the reflective plane, the thoughts appear as thoughts at the same time as they are formed. Consciousness is separated from the object while it is reasoning. It can rejoin it at the level of the conclusion, if it converts this latter into a non-reflective affirmation. This reflective ideation is not accompanied by images. First, images would be useless; next, if they should appear as image consciousnesses but not as consciousnesses of objects, they would lose their signification.

But the ideation could be effected entirely on the unreflective plane: it is enough that the pure knowledge is degraded in imaging knowledge, which is to say it loses its pre-reflective character to become frankly unreflective. In that case all thought becomes consciousness of things and not consciousness of itself. To comprehend a word is no longer to apprehend a concept: it is to realize an essence, comprehension of a judgement bears upon that objective content that the Germans call Sachverhalt. We could call that unreflective plane the plane of presences because of the attitude taken by consciousness: in fact, it behaves as if it were in the presence of the objects that it judges; that is to say it seeks to apprehend this thing and to form thoughts about it as about an external object. At that moment to comprehend a word comes to constituting before consciousness the corresponding thing. Comprehending ‘proletariat’ consists in constituting the proletariat, and making it appear to consciousness. The form in which this nature will appear will of course be a spatial form, because consciousness can realize a presence only in the spatial form. But this spatialization is not willed for itself. Actually, what takes place in consciousness here is the natural confusion between transcendence and externality. Invited to comprehend the word ‘proletariat’ or the phrase ‘nature imitates art’ we try to refer ourselves to the things themselves to contemplate them; in other words the first step of consciousness is recourse to intuition. Comprehension of a word therefore is given as the sudden appearance of the object. So that the spatial determinations are not signs or images of the structural relations that constitute the thing: they are apprehended as those very relations. They are the relations constituted by a piece of knowledge that is incorporated in a series of movements. But of course the object is not really constituted, it is there only ‘as imaged’, by consequence, it is given as itself absent. Correlatively the attitude of consciousness is not observation but quasi-observation, which is to say the presence of the object as imaged teaches nothing since the constitution of the object as imaged is already the comprehension. However the later thoughts will nonetheless be given as reactions of consciousness to the transcendent object, in brief as the results of contemplation, whereas they rise in the normal way from the original comprehension. We will shortly study the mechanism of this thought as imaged and we will see that, if the construction of the schema changes nothing in the phenomenon of comprehension, the later thoughts are altered in their essence by the fact that they have been motivated by an original thought as imaged.

II. SYMBOLIC SCHEMAS AND ILLUSTRATIONS OF THOUGHT

Having defined the symbolic schema, Flach distinguishes it from, successively:

1 Simple illustrations of thought which according to him can appear at the same time as a symbolic schema but which can never express more than one example.

2 Messer’s schematic representations (‘it was neither lion nor tiger, I was conscious of a hairy skin’). The symbolic schema is not the image of a determinate concrete object from which something is missing: schematic representations are therefore illustrations of fuzzier thoughts, containing certain indeterminations.

3 Diagrams that schematically represent, for example, the days of the week, the months of the year.

What the diagram has in common with the symbolic schema is the fact that the diagram spatially represents an abstract and unextended object. But there is here nothing other than a determinate location in space. This location serves as a mooring, an attachment, an orientation for our memory, but does not play any role in our thought.

4 Synaesthesias and synopsia, which is to say images regularly provoked by hearing proper names, vowels, etc.

5 Auto-symbolic phenomena. This is the name that Silberer gives to hypnagogic visions that symbolize an immediately antecedent thought.⁴ Flach distinguishes two types of hypnagogic symbolization. The first includes symbols quite close to symbolic schemas. In the second, there are simple illustrations of thought.

The essential distinction that Flach establishes between illustrations, schematic representations, diagrams, synaesthesia, auto-symbolic phenomena, on the one hand, and symbolic schemas on the other, mainly comes to this: the former do not express thought, they are connected to ideation by external links, which are moreover quite loose (mainly what are called links of association); the latter are a direct product of thought and are its exact expression on the plane of the image. This comes to admitting that there exist images provided with a symbolic function and others that do not have any kind of function, whether as survivals, fortuitous connections, or stereotypes. Below the plane of symbolic schemas Flach restores Binet’s‘engravings’.

I do not share his opinion. The image is a consciousness. If one accepts that principle, what sense is retained by the association of ideas? Association is presented as a causal connection between two contents. But, precisely, there can be no causal connection between two consciousnesses: a consciousness cannot be provoked from outside by another consciousness; rather it constitutes itself according to its own intentionality and the only link that could unite it with the previous consciousness is a link of motivation. Consequently we must no longer speak of automatisms and stereotypes. Binet and the Würzburg psychologists tend to constitute the image, in opposition to thought, as a phenomenon deprived of sense. But if the image is a consciousness, it must, like all the other species of consciousness, be characterized by its own sense. Its appearance following a thought is never the effect of a fortuitous connection; it plays a role. Without doubt that role is easier to determine in the case of the symbolic schema than in that of an engraving. But if our premises are correct, there must be a function for all the images that are not given as schemas.

Diagrams fairly easily reduce to symbolic schemas. Flach almost admits this when, after having distinguished most diagrams from symbolic schemas and having refused them any function other than that of ‘orientation for our memory’, he makes an exception for diagrams whose structure betrays a dominant preoccupation of the subject. Regarding a diagram representing the months of the year, for example, he asked the subject why three months were missing, and the reply was: ‘because there were three months of boredom every year of my childhood’.

Evidently that diagram is clearly symbolic. But is this not the case with all diagrams, though more discreetly? With many subjects the months are complete but arranged in a line ascending, descending, broken, curved, straight, etc. All these arrangements have a sense that corresponds most often to the way that the year is divided by the professional occupation of the subject. In a word the diagrams that represent the months or the days of the week for the subject regularly express the way that the succession of months or days appears to the subject; that is, the year or the week appears in its concrete structure. It is the same for synaesthesia, which is to say the case, for example, where a vowel evokes for the subject a certain colour. Synaesthesia is never given as produced by a pure association. The colour is given as the sense of the vowel.

A forty-year-old man, who experiences very precise colours for a, o, and u but not for i; he understands, however, that one can possibly see this sound white or yellow, but he believes that ‘to find red, one must have a badly made mind and perverse imagination’.⁵

When Flournoy tries to explain synaesthesia by what he calls ‘identity of emotional basis’, he does not take account of this kind of logical resistance that one feels when one wants to change the colour that is evoked by a vowel. This is due to the fact that the colour is given as the sound ‘in person’ just as the ‘sea vaguely rolling’ is given as the proletariat in person. Of course, it would be a case of a consciousness more affective than intellectual and the image would translate the personal reaction of the subject to the vowel. Besides, I cannot see why Flach, who admits the symbolic sense of the colour in his discussion of experiment 14 (‘compromise … it had a dirty greeny-grey colour’) or of experiment 22 (‘Baudelaire: … a splash of blue-green colour, like that of vitriol’), will not admit this again when it is a case of synaesthesia. And besides, except for complication, what difference is there between experiment 22 ‘Baudelaire’ and a simple synaesthesia? Without doubt the symbolic schema is generally constituted as spatial determination. But that simply comes from the fact that comprehensions of a purely intellectual order are more readily translated into movements. Knowledge, we have seen, directly impregnates kinaesthetic sensations. But there also exists a comprehension ‘of the heart’, and this is expressed by synopsias.

It is advisable, finally, to note that the images that present all the characters of ‘engraving’ can play the role of symbolic schema. Flach recognized this himself: when he asked a subject to furnish him with a brief characterization of the philosophy of Fichte, he represented ‘the self creating the non-self to go beyond it’ by a worker hitting a wall with a hammer; and Flach is obliged to admit that functionally this illustration of thought is assimilable to a schema.

If therefore the phenomena of auto-symbolism are put aside, since they are doubtful and difficult to study, a first examination leads us to note both the following: first, the domain of the symbolic schema is much more extended than Flach takes it to be and we must allow into it all the neighbouring phenomena that he tried to put aside; second, the distinction between schema and engraving is not clear-cut: these are rather the limits connected by transitory forms; therefore they should not be conceived as exercising radically different functions.

It remains however that, if one compares a schema with an illustration, one finds considerable differences between these two types of image. Suppose that I am asked to define in a few words the historical period called the Renaissance. It could be that I produce an indeterminate image of movement, something like a jet of water that opens out and falls down; I could also see the opening out of a flower. In both cases we call my image a symbolic schema. Without doubt there is more in the second case than in the first: the image has, in addition to its symbolic sense, another sense that one can grasp from outside, for example if the subject draws this image. But that supplementary sense is not thought for itself: to the extent that it is conscious, it is still a quality that I confer on the object.

But I could also produce another sort of image: for example, I could, at the statement of the word Renaissance ‘see’ Michelangelo’s David. The essential difference here is that David is not the Renaissance. Still it should be noted that this difference could not be noticed from outside. Only the subject can say if the image is symbolic of the Renaissance or if, in some way, it is a lateral image; only the subject can tell us if Michelangelo’s David is thought for itself or as a symbol. Suppose that Michelangelo’s David is apprehended for itself. In this very apprehension there must be a particular intention, since, precisely, it is the apprehension that could be symbolic. The symbolizing apprehension confers on David the sense ‘Renaissance’; the non-symbolizing apprehension constitutes it as ‘Michelangelo’s statue to be found in such a museum in Florence etc.’. If my first goal was to give a brief definition of what I understand by ‘Renaissance’, I am therefore obliged to recognize that my thought deviated. But this deviation could not be made on the level of the constituted image; it is on the level of knowledge, on the same level as the activity of ideation, that the change of direction takes place; and that change, far from being provoked by the appearance of the image, is an indispensable condition of this appearance. It is therefore a spontaneous deviation that thought gives itself and that could not be the effect of chance or external constraint: this deviation must have a functional sense. Why has a thought that seeks to make present the content of the concept ‘Renaissance’ made this detour, why has it lingered to form the image of this statue?

It would be well to undertake a description of the way that this image appears to me. We notice first that it is given as linked by the unity of the same quest to previous productions of consciousness; in a word, that David is not presented simply as such but as a step towards the comprehension of the term ‘Renaissance’. And that very term ‘step’ is a rubric for the ensemble of contradictory significances of the statue. In a sense, indeed, it is presented as a unity among others, the collection of which constitutes the total extension of the term being studied. It is a point of departure for a systematic review of all the works of art that I may know (connaître) and that were produced at the time of the Renaissance. But, from another side, the image tries to retain us on it: in this very David, I could find the sought solution to the problem. This David, without being explicitly given for the Renaissance, vaguely claims to conceal in itself the sense of that epoch, in the way that one says, for example: if you visit the castle in Berlin, you will understand the sense of Bismarck’s Prussia. At the limit of this claim and by a kind of participation, the statue aimed at can appear as being the Renaissance.

Only, this way of being the Renaissance cannot have the purity of that of the symbolic schema. In the schema, in fact, spatial determinations have no sense other than that of the concept that they represent or if perchance they have their own signification (flower, worker hitting a wall with a hammer), this signification has value only within the limits of the concept symbolized and as a more subtle means of rendering it present. On the other hand, for David the way of appearing as David is totally independent of the Renaissance. The very sense of David as David goes back to a mass of knowledge (connaissances) that cannot be of service here. This statue by Michelangelo is given to me as the David that I have seen in the course of my journey in Italy, as the work of a sculptor some of whose other works I know (connais), as an artistic production that I can class among others, etc., finally, as a unique event in my life, beginning with which I can reconstitute a whole atmosphere, a whole disappeared epoch. Without doubt all this is not explicit, it is an affective sense that can be developed. But it is enough for this David who, in some way, is or tends to be ‘the Renaissance’ to also be given as something that can divert my thought and carry me far from my current task, in brief as the correlate of a consciousness that can lose its equilibrium and slide for example into a daydream. So that the statue seems rather to be the Renaissance by a mystical link of participation.

It appears to me, therefore, at the end of this brief description, that the illustration image is produced as the first groping of a lower thought and that the ambiguities of its signification come from the uncertainties of a thought that has not yet risen to the clear vision that is a concept. It seems to me, in fact, that our first response to an abstract question, free to correct itself immediately, is always – at least in principle – a lower response, at once pre-logical and empirical. At the same time, this response is without unity because the thought is indecisive and hesitates between several means – all equally insufficient – to produce a concept. Socrates asked Hippias ‘What is beauty?’ and Hippias responded ‘It is a beautiful woman, a beautiful horse, etc.’. This response seems to me to mark not only an historical step in the development of human thought but also a necessary step (although the habit of reflection can curtail it) in the production of a concrete individual thought. This first response of thought naturally takes the form of the image. Many people asked about the nature of beauty produce in themselves the image of the Venus de Milo, and this is as if they responded ‘Beauty is the Venus de Milo’.

But this is only one of the aspects of the illustration image: it is produced in addition by an unintelligent thought, which quickly tries to join together the most knowledge (connaissances) on the question posed; it is as if we say: ‘Beauty? Well: there is the Venus de Milo, there is …’, and one never goes further because of the contradictory tendencies that constitute the image. Under this new aspect in any case, we seize a second manner that the thought has to represent the concept; it would be only the sum of the unities of the class that it designates.

But the very fact that these pieces of knowledge (connaissances) (the Venus de Milo, David, etc.) are presented under an imaged form and are not purely verbal signifies more and better. Place someone in a museum hall where several masterpieces of the Renaissance can be found together; then ask them to give you a brief characterization of this artistic epoch, and there is a good bet that they will cast a glance, before responding, towards one of the statues or one of the paintings present. Why? They could not answer this themselves: it is an attempt to observe, to refer to the very thing and to examine it, it is a priority given to experience, a way of affirming a naive empiricism that is also one of the lower steps of thought. In the absence of the masterpieces, the reaction would be the same: one will try to make present the statue of David, which is to say the thought takes the form of imaging consciousness. Only that which the thought renders present in its haste is an object that the thought does not itself know well whether it is beauty or an exemplar of beautiful things or whether one could draw from examining it a comprehension of the concept ‘beauty’. The result of these uncertainties is an image that is posited for itself and at the same time as a step of comprehension. The thought, moreover, by true comprehension, abruptly leaves this way and, by a creative effort, considers the Renaissance itself as present in person: then the schema appears. What changes, in sum, is not the role of the image, which indeed is always the correlate of a consciousness: it is the nature of the thought. Starting from the illustration image, there are therefore always two possible routes: one route by which the thought is lost in daydreams and abandons its first assignment, another which leads it to comprehension properly so-called. It is this always possible annihilation of thought on the level of the image that has struck psychologists like Binet and made them conclude that the image was an obstruction for thought. But it is the thought – not the image – that is responsible for the disequilibrium of that same thought.

III. IMAGE AND THOUGHT

We shall not seek to know if all unreflective thought takes the form of the image. It is enough for us to have noted that the image is like an incarnation of unreflective thought. The imaging consciousness represents a certain type of thought: thought that is constituted in and by its object. Every new thought concerning this object will be presented, in the imaging consciousness, as a new determination apprehended on the object. But, of course, it is only a case of quasi-apprehensions here. In fact thought is not observed on the object, but, rather, it appears as the object. If the development of an idea is made in the form of a series of synthetically linked imaging consciousnesses, there will result for the object as imaged a kind of life. It appears sometimes under one aspect, sometimes under another, sometimes with such determination, sometimes with such other. To judge that a coach driver whose face is represented vaguely has a moustache is to see the appearance of his face having a moustache. There is an imaging form of judgement that is nothing other than the addition of new qualities to the object, accompanied by the feeling of risk, of engagement, or of taking one’s responsibilities. These few remarks permit us to sketch a solution to the problem of the relations of the image to the concept. If we think in the imaging mode of some individual objects it will be these objects themselves that appear to our consciousness. They will appear as they are, which is to say as spatial realities with determinations of form, colour, etc. They will never, moreover, have that individuality and unicity that characterize the objects of perception. There will be contaminations, a kind of vagueness, deep indetermination: I have tried to explain this essential structure of the image in part three of this work. At the same time, the object is given as not being there in person, as an absent object. Whatever it may be, it is the form that the thought takes on to appear to our consciousness. If we think now of a class, like ‘horse’,‘man’, etc., it is the class itself that appears to us. It is rare, to tell the truth, that we think a class all alone. Most of the time our thoughts are the grasping of relations between classes. One can indeed say that the thought of an isolated concept is always the result of artificial exercises. However, this thought is always possible and three cases can be produced: in the first, we lack the sense of the sought concept or we approach it indirectly. In that case, our first approximations are presented in the form of individual objects pertaining to that concept. If I seek to think the concept ‘man’, I could try to orient myself in producing the image of a particular man or the image of such geography as represents the white man, etc. I have tried, in the preceding section, to explain this type of thought. But it can also be that our thought directly grasps the concept itself. The concept – this is the second case – could then appear in the form of an object in space. But this object will not be individualized, it will not be this or that man, it will be man, the class made man. The object of our imaging consciousness will be, of course, an indeterminate man, which will have nothing in common with Galton’s composite image, but whose indetermination would be its very essence. This will be like the fugitive consciousness of having a man before one, without either being able or wanting to know his look, his colour, his height, etc. This way of getting to the concept in extension is, without doubt, still of a rather low level of thought. But if in the third place we get to the concept all at once in comprehension, which is to say as a system of relations, it will appear to us then as an ensemble of pure determinations of space that will have no function other than to present it: that is to say, it takes the form of a symbolic schema. But concepts like ‘man’,‘horse’, etc. are too charged with the sensible and too poor in logical content for us to rise often to this third stage. The symbolic schema appears only with an effort of comprehension, which is to say on the occasion of abstract thought. These three ways in which the concept appears to unreflective thought correspond therefore to three clearly defined attitudes of consciousness. In the first I orient myself, I search about me. In the second, I remain among objects but I make the very class, the collection of these objects as such, appear to my consciousness. In the third, I clearly turn away from things (as unities or as collection) to turn myself towards relations. The relations of concept to the image therefore do not pose any problem. In fact, there are not some concepts and some images. But there are for the concept two ways of appearing: as pure thought on the reflective terrain and, on the unreflective terrain, as image.

But a more serious question arises: in the image, thought is itself constituted as a thing. Will this not result in deep modifications of it? Could one admit that a pure reflective thought and a spatialized thought have strictly the same signification; is not the thought as imaged a lower form of thought? To tell the truth, two cases must be distinguished, and this way that thought has of being captive in a spatial representation carries different consequences for the ultimate course of consciousness, depending on whether consciousness supports this enchainment reluctantly and seeks to free itself from it, or whether it allows itself to be absorbed by the image like water by sand. In the first case, the subject, at the very moment of forming the image, is conscious of an insufficiency of this means of thought and already seeks to be delivered from it. Here, for example, is an interesting observation of R. A., a qualified philosophy teacher:

I had the impression of understanding with full comprehension the essential thought of Brunschvicg in reading the pages of L’Orientation du Rationalisme, which resumes Schopenhauer’s thought: ‘There is no object except for the spectator.’ When, going beyond the order of knowledge, Brunschvicg, in the very order of being, draws the two correlative realities (subject and object) out of a spiritual activity, an original current, I believed I had grasped the final point of his thought and I recall an image that illustrated, in some way, my intellectual effort. At the centre, a kind of schematic, geometric representation of a movement and then, beyond, on the two sides of this moving line, two symmetrical points or rather two small circles very similar to the inner circle of a target. Without doubt, this image was not in the foreground of clear consciousness. Nevertheless I detected it but felt it insufficient because still sullied with a remainder of materiality, but it seemed to me that my impression of comprehension came essentially from the movement of thought to grasp the image and to go beyond it. I felt that if I could think the spiritual equivalent of this image without the aid of any sensible representation, then I would have truly comprehended Brunschvicg because I would have to see ‘with the eyes of the soul’ nature and mind (in the second sense) emerge from this spiritual and creative primitive impulse.⁶

R. A.’s description does not permit the doubt that we are in the presence of a symbolic schema. If one wants to refer to the preceding sections, one will see that all the characteristics of the schema are to be found here. But R. A.’s consciousness contains an additional determination, which we have not met with before now in any of Flach’s descriptions: the schema gives itself as provisional, insufficient, as a step to be surpassed. But did we not say that the symbolic schema was the essence that it represented? How is it possible, therefore, for it to be given at once as being this essence (the genesis in a spiritual movement of the object-couple) and as not being it? It seems however that this structure of consciousness is very frequent among philosophers, which is to say among people who have a large habit of ‘thinking about thinking’ as Goethe said, which is to say who are deeply convinced of the immaterial character of thought, who have long known that it escapes any effort to represent it, define it, capture it and who, consequently, use only comparisons and metaphors soberly and with some repugnance when they speak about it. The symbolic schema appears therefore, for them, not as being their thought but rather as having a superficial and very deceptive aspect. Without doubt it is indeed entirely there, but in the form that can dupe. Consequently, the schema gives itself as a fugitive outside of thought, which itself appears as not being able to be exhausted by anything ‘outside’ that it may adopt and, finally, as radically heterogeneous with its appearances.

As a result, there are two attitudes enquirers can have in relation to their own thinking. Either be content with grasping the schema as a possible direction, like the open door to a series of further enquiries, the indication of a nature by which to grasp beyond material aspects. In this case, the schema possesses a characteristic dynamism that comes from the fact that it comprises its own surpassing. But, at the same time, comprehension is not given as acted, it is only sketched as possible, as being nearly delivered from all the images. Very often comprehension is only that: the schema plus the idea that one could, that one ought, go further.

Or else the subject really effects the operations that must free thought from its materialistic obstacles. The subject disengages from the schema, conserving all the thought. But if the subject remains in the unreflective attitude, which is to say being only conscious of the object (particular or universal essence, relations between essences, etc.) about which the thoughts are formed, the subject cannot turn away from the symbolic schema without constructing another, and so on to infinity. The subject will stop these operations sooner or later. But this stopping remains without importance if the subject continues this dissatisfaction with every image, of which we have just seen the importance; if one can say to oneself at the moment one stops oneself what Gide wants to write at the end of The Counterfeiters, ‘could be continued’, then in that case the essence that one seeks to grasp appears as not being in any of the forms that it has taken, nor in the infinity of forms that it could have taken. It is other, radically other. And, by the very fact that the subject does not cease to affirm this heterogeneity, all this imaged clothing, all these schemas are without danger for thought. But thought, although we could express ourselves about it without keeping account of the images in which it reveals itself, is never directly accessible to us, if we have once taken the imaging attitude in forming it. We will always go from image to image. Comprehension is a movement which is never-ending, it is the reaction of the mind to an image by another image, to this one by another image and so on, in principle to infinity. To substitute for this infinite regression the simple intuition of a naked thought requires a radical change of attitude, a veritable revolution, which is to say passing from the unreflective plane to the reflective plane. On this plane, in fact, thought is given as thought at the same time as it appears; so it is entirely transparent for itself. But one can never find any passageway that allows a progressive climb from unreflective to reflective thought, which is to say from the idea as image to the idea as idea. The simple act of intellection on the reflective plane has as a correlate the infinite idea of approximations by symbols on the unreflective plane. As a result of this equivalence, the two processes, on the two planes, are equivalents for the progress of knowledge (connaissance).

It is totally otherwise when the schema absorbs the thought and is presented as being itself the essence or the relation that is to be determined. Unreflective thought is a possession. To think an essence or a relation on this plane is to produce them ‘inflesh and blood’, to constitute them in their living reality (and of course under the ‘category of absence’ that I have defined in the first chapter of Part I) and it is at the same time to see them, to possess them. But at the same time it is to constitute them in a certain form and to consider this form as exactly expressing their nature, as being their nature. Here the thought is enclosed in the image and the image is given as adequate to the thought. From this there follows a warping – possible at any moment – of the further course of consciousness. In fact, the object considered (essence, relation, complex of relations, etc.) is not presented only as an ideal structure: it is also a material structure. Or rather ideal and material structure are made but one. But the material structure implies certain determinations of space, certain symmetries, certain relations of position, sometimes even the existence of things or persons (see, for example, the worker hitting a wall with a hammer, above). While the evolution of these determinations remains ruled by the ideal sense of the image, while the transformations of the schema remain commanded by those of thought, the development of the idea is not altered. But this subordination of the material structures to the ideal structures is possible only if one grasps the material structures as not exhausting the ideal structures, only if a relative independence is posited between the two. This is produced only in the attitude that I have described in the preceding pages when the subject, although in the unreflective attitude, retains a kind of vague memory, a kind of empty knowledge concerning the pure idea in general. But in the vast majority of cases the material structure is given as being the ideal structure and the development of the figure, of the schema, in its spatial nature is given as strictly identical with the development of the idea. One can see the danger; a slight preference is enough, it is enough to momentarily consider the spatial relations of the schema for themselves and to let them be affirmed or modified in accordance with the laws proper to spatiality: the thought is irremediably warped, we no longer follow the idea directly, we think by analogy. It appears to me that this insensible degradation of thought is one of the most frequent causes of error, particularly in philosophy and psychology.

In the imaging attitude, in fact, we find ourselves in the presence of an object that is given as analogous to that which can appear to us in perception. This object, in so far as it is constituted as a thing (pure determinations of geometric space, common object, plant, animal person) is the correlate of a certain knowledge (empirical – physical or biological – laws, or a priori – geometric – laws), which has served to constitute it but which has not been exhausted in this constitution. This knowledge presides over further developments of the image, orients them in this or that direction, resists when we want to modify the image arbitrarily. In a word, as soon as I constitute the image of an object, the object tries to behave as imaged as objects of the same class do in reality. Flach cites good examples, but he does not seem to understand their importance.

The subject represents, for example, balls thrown into the air. He then feels in his limbs the resistance of the air to the rising balls. We have made no deeper researches into these synaesthesias because it is established that these phenomena properly pertain to intuition and do not constitute an important characteristic of the symbolic schema as such. They belong to the cases of illustrations of thought by simple association.

Actually, in the excellent example cited by Flach, they are by no means associations, but the explanation of a piece of knowledge that becomes conscious of itself only in the image form. The subject aims at full knowledge (connaissance) only of the trajectory of the balls thrown into the air. But the subject cannot think of this trajectory without at the same time thinking of the resistance of the air; and this, although one did not expressly want to represent it, the body mimics as the indispensable complement of the object. So the image, left to itself, has its own laws of development, which depend in their turn on the knowledge that has served to constitute it. Here is an observation that will make you feel it better:

I wanted to speak of a car that climbs banks easily and I was searching for an expression that would render this abstract judgement – unformulated – that I judged comical: ‘It climbs banks as if it were attracted by gravity, as if it were falling towards the top and not towards the bottom.’ I had an image: I saw the car climbing a bank; I had the feeling it climbed was climbing on its own and without a motor. But precisely I could not imagine this reversal of gravity; the image resisted and offered me only an equivalent: I had the vague feeling of a presence at the top of the bank of a poorly defined object, a kind of magnet that was attracting the car. As this image was not the one that I had wanted to produce, there resulted an indecisiveness and I could not find the adequate expression. I then had to search for a slant and I said: ‘One has to slow it down as it climbs.’ This introduction of a new element modified my image and gave it an entirely different nuance, the elements remaining the same nevertheless; instead of being attracted by a magnet, the same car was climbing the hill by itself: it was no longer a machine but an animate being that was moving spontaneously and whose fervour I had to control.

In this example, the subject wanted to construct, as intermediary between the abstract thought ‘reversal of gravity’ and verbal expression, a concrete image the essence of which would then have passed into the discourse. But this image would not let itself be constructed because it entered its nature to contradict the concrete knowledge that had presided at its formation; its sought structure had been missing, one slid right or left, one reached the living car-beast, the magnetized car, but this reversed gravity, although conceived, was not grasped as imaged. From these concrete laws that reside at the individual development of each image, nothing is more typical than the transformation of the car into a living being after the phrase ‘One has to slow it down as it climbs’. This car that one must slow down as it climbs ceased, by that very fact, to appear as a machine. The mere fact of imagining the slowing and the circumstances were completed spontaneously by adding a kind of living force to the machine that one slows down. Thus, although the mind is always free to vary no matter which element of the image, we must not believe that it could alter, at the same time, all the elements as it likes. Everything happens as if the transformations of the image were sufficiently strictly ruled by the laws of compossibility. These laws cannot be determined a priori and depend on the knowledge that enters into the combination.

Let us return now to our problem: when I produce, in the course of my reflections, an image of the type that Flach named ‘symbolic’ (whether of a schema or any other representation), it seems that there is in this image a conflict between what it is and what it represents, between the possibilities of development that come to it from the idea that it incarnates and its own dynamism. On the one hand, stones, a hammer, a flower could be symbols for a mass of abstract essences; on the other hand, this flower, these stones, this hammer have their own nature and tend to develop as imaged conforming to that nature. When I conserve at the very centre of images that dissatisfaction with images of which I have spoken, the thought does not suffer from this ambiguity because I leave no time for the image to develop according to its own laws, I leave it as soon as I have formed it; I am never satisfied with it. Always ready to get bogged down in the materiality of the image, the thought escapes by flowing into another image, this one into another, and so on. But in most cases, this defiance of the image, which is like a memory of reflection, does not appear. In such a case, the laws of development belonging to the image are frequently confused with the laws of the essence being considered. If this essence appears in the form of a stone rolling down a slope, this descent of the stone, which draws all its necessity from my physical knowledge, develops and reinforces the symbol, confers its rigour upon it. The following observation will show the dangers of this substitution.

I would have liked to convince myself of the idea that every oppressed person or every oppressed group takes from the very oppression they suffer the strength to shake it off. But I had the clear impression that such a theory was arbitrary and I felt a kind of obstruction. I made a new effort at reflection: at that moment arose the image of a compressed spring. At the same time I felt in my muscles the latent force of a spring. It was going to release itself more violently the more strongly compressed it was. In a moment I felt to the point of evidence the necessity of the idea of which, the prior moment, I could not persuade myself.⁷

One sees what this is: the oppressed is the spring. But on the other hand, on the compressed spring we can already read with evidence the force with which it will release itself: a compressed spring clearly represents potential energy. This potential energy will evidently be that of the oppressed, since the oppressed is the spring. One sees clearly here the contamination between the laws of the image and those of the essence represented. It is the spring that presents this idea of potential energy that increases in proportion to the force that one exerts on the object, it is on the spring that we can apprehend it. Change the term of comparison, take in place of a spring an organism for example, and you will have an absolutely inverse intuition, something that can be expressed by the phrase: ‘Oppression demeans and degrades those that suffer it.’ But the image of a spring left to itself and envisaged purely and simply as image of a spring would not be enough to convince us. Without doubt the spring accumulates force. But never enough to be able to get rid of the weight which bears on it, since the force that it accumulates is always less than that which compresses it. The conclusion that one can then read on the image would be this: ‘The oppressed gain in force and in value from the very fact of the oppression, but they will never get rid of their yoke.’

In fact, as I could justify to myself, in reproducing in myself the schema of a spring, there is more. The image is falsified by the sense: the energy that is accumulated in that compressed spring is not felt as a pure passive storing, but as a living force that accrues over time. Here the image of a spring is no longer simply an image of a spring. It is more of something indefinable: an image of a living spring. There is here, without doubt, a contradiction, but I believe I have shown in Part II that there is no image without an inner contradiction. It is in and by this very contradiction that the impression of evidence is constituted. Thus the image carries in itself a spurious persuasive power, which comes from the ambiguity of its nature.

IV. IMAGE AND PERCEPTION

At the beginning of this work I have shown the difficulties raised by every attempt to constitute perception by an amalgam of sensations and images. We now understand why these theories are inadmissible: because the image and the perception, far from being two elementary psychic factors of similar quality and that simply enter into different combinations, represent the two great irreducible attitudes of consciousness. It follows that they exclude one another. I have already remarked that when one aims at Pierre as imaged through a painting, one ceases by that very fact to perceive the painting. But the structure of images called ‘mental’ is the same as that of the images whose analogon is external: the formation of an imaging consciousness is accompanied, in this case as in the preceding, by an annihilation of perceptual consciousness, and reciprocally. As long as I look at this table, I cannot form an image of Pierre; but if all at once the irreal Pierre surges up before me, the table that is under my eyes vanishes, leaves the scene. So these two objects, the real table and the irreal Pierre can only alternate as correlates of radically distinct consciousnesses: how could the image, under these conditions, contribute to forming the perception?

It remains, evidently, that I always perceive more and otherwise than I see. It is this incontestable fact – which seems to me to constitute the very structure of perception – that psychologists of the past have tried to explain by the introduction of images into perception, which is to say in supposing that we complete the strictly sensory contribution in projecting irreal qualities on the objects. Of course this explanation required that a strict assimilation between image and sensation was – at least theoretically – always possible. If it is true that there is here, as I have tried to show, an enormous countersense, we must seek new hypotheses. We will limit ourselves to indicating possible directions for research.

In the first place, the works of Köhler, Wertheimer, and Koffka, permit us henceforth to explain certain anomalous constants of perception by the persistence of formal structures through our variations of position. A deepened study of these forms would permit us, without doubt, to understand why we perceive otherwise than we see.

It remains to explain why perception includes more. The problem will be simplified if one would, once and for all, renounce that being of reason that is pure sensation. We could then say, with Husserl, that perception is the act by which consciousness puts itself in the presence of a spatio-temporal object. Now, into the very constitution of that object there enters a mass of empty intentions that do not posit new objects but which determine the present object in relation to aspects not presently perceived. For example, it is understood that this ashtray before me has an ‘underneath’, that it rests by means of this underneath on the table, that this underneath is white porcelain, etc. These diverse pieces of knowledge (connaissances) come either from a mnemonic knowledge, or from antepredicative inferences. But what must be noted well is that the knowledge, whatever its origin, remains unformulated, antepredicative: it is not that it is unconscious but that it sticks to the object, it merges into the act of perception. What is aimed at is never explicitly the invisible aspect of the thing, it is that visible aspect of the thing such that an invisible aspect corresponds to it, it is the upper face of the ashtray such that its very structure as upper face implies the existence of an ‘underneath’. Evidently it is these intentions that give the perception its fullness and its richness. Without them, Husserl is strongly justified in saying, the psychic contents would remain ‘anonymous’. But they are nonetheless radically heterogeneous with imaging consciousnesses: they do not become formulated, posit nothing separately and are limited to projecting onto the object, as a constituting structure, barely determined qualities, almost simple possibilities of development (like the fact, for a chair, of having two legs other than those one can see, for arabesques of a wall tapestry, that they also continue behind the cupboard, for this man that I see from behind, that one can also see him from the front, etc.). One sees that it is here a case neither of an image that has fallen into the unconscious nor a reduced image.

Without doubt these intentions can give rise to images and this is, in all likelihood, the very origin of the error that we have denounced. They are the very condition of every image concerning objects of perception, in the sense in which all knowledge is the condition of corresponding images. Only, if I wish to represent to myself the wall tapestry behind the cupboard, the empty intentions implied in the perception of the visible arabesques will have to be detached, to posit for themselves, to be made explicit and to be degraded. At the same time they cease to be merged in the perceptual act in order to be constituted in a sui generis act of consciousness. So also the hidden arabesques no longer constitute a quality of the visible arabesques – namely that they have a sequel, they continue without interruption. But they appear as isolated to consciousness, as an autonomous object.

There is therefore in perception the beginning of an infinity of images; but these can be constituted only at the price of the annihilation of perceptual consciousness.

In summary, we can say that the imaging attitude represents a particular function in psychic life. If such an image appears, in place of simple words, of verbal thoughts, or of pure thoughts, this is never the result of fortuitous association: it is always a case of a global and sui generis attitude that has a sense and a use. It is absurd to say that an image can harm or slow thought, or it is necessary to understand by this that thought can hurt itself, can lose itself in its meanders and detours; there is in fact between image and thought no opposition but only the relation of a species to the genus that subsumes it. Thought takes the imaged form when it wants to be intuitive, when it wants to ground its affirmations on the sight of an object. In that case, it tries to make the object appear before it, to see it, or better still to possess it. But this attempt, in which anyway all thought risks being bogged down, is always a failure: the objects are affected with the character of irreality. A result is that our attitude in the face of the image is radically different from our attitude in the face of things. Love, hate, desire, will are quasi-love, quasi-hate, etc., as the observation of the irreal object is a quasi-observation. It is this conduct in the face of the irreal that will now be the object of our study, under the name of the imaginary life.

Part IV
The Imaginary Life

I. THE IRREAL OBJECT

The act of imagination, as we have just seen, is a magical act. It is an incantation destined to make the object of one’s thought, the thing one desires, appear in such a way that one can take possession of it. There is always, in that act, something of the imperious and the infantile, a refusal to take account of distance and difficulties. Thus the very young child, from his bed, acts on the world by orders and prayers. Objects obey these orders of consciousness: they appear. But they have a very particular mode of existence that I will try to describe.

From the outset my incantation strives to obtain these objects in their entirety, to reproduce their complete existence. Consequently, these objects do not appear as in perception, at a particular angle; they are not given from a point of view; I try to bring them to birth as they are in themselves. I do not care about Pierre as ‘seen at seven o’clock in the evening, in profile, last Wednesday’, or as ‘perceived yesterday at my window’.¹ What I want and what I obtain is just Pierre. This is not to say that Pierre does not appear to me with a certain position, perhaps even in a certain place. But the objects of our imaging consciousnesses are like the silhouettes drawn by children: the face is seen in profile and yet both eyes are drawn. In a word, the imaged objects are seen from several sides at once; or better – for this multiplication of points of view, of sides, does not render an exact account of the imaging intention – they are ‘presentified’ under a totalitarian aspect. There is something like an outline of a point of view on them that vanishes, is diluted. These are not sensible, but rather quasi-sensible things.

For the rest, the object as imaged is an irreality. Without doubt it is present but, at the same time, it is out of reach. I cannot touch it, change its place: or rather I can indeed do so, but on the condition that I do it in an irreal way, renouncing being served by my own hands, resorting to phantom hands that will deliver irreal blows to this face: to act on these irreal objects, I must duplicate myself, irrealize myself. But, besides, none of these objects claim an action, a conduct of me. They are neither heavy, nor pressing, nor demanding: they are pure passivity, they wait. The feeble life that we breathe into them comes from us, from our spontaneity. If we turn ourselves away from them, they are annihilated; we will see in the following section that they are totally inactive: final terms, they are never original terms. Even among themselves, they are neither causes nor effects.

Perhaps one will want to object that this unfolding of images ‘by association’ supposes a kind of passivity of the mind. If I represent a murder to myself, I ‘see’ the blood run and the body of the victim fall. Undoubtedly: but I do not see them in spite of myself: I spontaneously produce them, because I think (songe) them. These details appear not as a consequence of a tendency of the object to complete itself automatically, in the sense that Wolff declared ‘reditur integra perceptio’, but as a consequence of a new consciousness formed on the imaged object. This is shown well by Janet’s work on psychaesthenics: the tragic character of obsession comes from the fact that the mind forces itself to reproduce the object it fears. There is no mechanical reappearance of the obsessive image nor a monoideism in the classic sense of the term: rather the obsession is willed, reproduced by a kind of giddiness, by a spasm of spontaneity.

This passive object, artificially kept alive, but which, at any moment, is close to vanishing, cannot fulfil desires. However, it is not completely useless: constituting an irreal object is a way of deceiving desires momentarily in order to exacerbate them, a little like the effect sea water has on thirst. If I desire to see a friend, I make that friend appear irreally. It is a way of playing at satisfaction. But the satisfaction is only played because, in fact, my friend is not really there. I give nothing to the desire; what is more, it is the desire that constitutes the object for the most part: to the extent that it projects the irreal object before it, it is specified as a desire. At first it is only Pierre that I desire to see. But my desire becomes desire for such smile, for such physiognomy. So it is limited and exacerbated at the same time and the irreal object is precisely – at least where its effective aspect is concerned – the limitation and the exacerbation at the same time. It is but a mirage and the desire, in the imaging act, nourishes itself. More exactly, the object as imaged is a definite lack; it stands out as a cavity. A white wall as imaged is a white wall that lacks perception.

We do not mean that Pierre himself is irreal. He is a being of flesh and blood who is in his room in Paris at this moment. The imaging intentions that aim at him are equally real, as is the affective-motor analogon that they animate. We must no longer believe that there are two Pierres, the real Pierre of Rue d’Ulm and the irreal Pierre that is the correlate of my current consciousness. The only Pierre that I know (connaisse) and that I aim at is the one who is real, who really lives in this real room in Paris. It is therefore this Pierre that I invoke and that appears to me. But he does not appear here. He is not in this room where I write. He appears to me in his real room, in that room where he really is. But then, one might say, he is no longer irreal? It must be understood: Pierre and his room, real in so far as they are situated in Paris, three hundred real kilometres from my real position, are not so any more in so far as they currently appear to me. Even if I think, as Pierre as imaged is evoked, ‘he is unfortunately not here’, this must not be understood as distinguishing between Pierre as imaged and Pierre of flesh and blood. There is but one Pierre and it is precisely he that is not here; to not be here is his essential quality: in a moment Pierre is given to me as being in rue d’Ulm, which is to say as absent. And this absenteeism of Pierre, which I directly perceive, which constitutes the essential structure of my image, is precisely a nuance that colours him entirely, is what I call his irreality.

Generally, it is not only the very matter of the object that is irreal: all the spatial and temporal determinations to which it is subjected participate in this irreality.

In the case of space, this is obvious. Everyone can see that the space of the image is not that of perception. Nevertheless, as there remain some difficulties for a certain number of particular cases, I must sketch a general discussion of the problem. If I recall my friend Pierre all of a sudden, I will ‘see’ him in his grey suit, with this or that posture. But most of the time he does not appear to me in a determinate place. It is not that all spatial determinations are missing, since Pierre has certain qualities of position. But the topographical determinations are incomplete or totally lacking. One might perhaps try to say: Pierre appears to me on the left, several metres from me, at the height of my eyes, of my hands. Many descriptions made by educated subjects (in the investigations of the Würzburg psychologists or those of Spaier) mention these alleged locations. But it is easy to detect the error of these subjects: in fact, in admitting that Pierre appears to my left, one admits that he does not appear at the same time to the right of the armchair that is really present before me. This location, therefore, must be illusory. What explains it is that, to make Pierre as imaged emerge, we must inform certain kinaesthetic impressions that gives us information about the movements of our hands, of our eyeballs, etc. We have tried to describe the process of these ‘animations’ in Part II of this work. Now, in comparison with these ‘informed’ impressions there remain others that belong to the same organs and that retain all their kinaesthetic signification, but which reach our consciousness as so much information about our hands, about our eyes. And these latter are so close to the former that they become imperceptibly mixed with them. For example, I could interpret the movements of my eyeballs as the static form M; and by that it must be understood that I animate by means of a new intention the impressions that come to me from the contraction of the orbicular muscles and the rolling of the eyes in their orbits. But other regions of the orbits, the eyebrow muscles etc., furnish me with unaltered kinaesthetic impressions, so that the motor analogon cannot be entirely detached from its kinaesthetic entourage. There is then made, by contamination, a sort of lateral and spontaneous location of the object as imaged and this is why I situate it ‘to the left’, ‘to the right’, ‘above’, or ‘below’. But these spatial determinations, although they could sometimes mask the irreal character of imaged space, can in no way qualify the irreal object.

If we discard these false locations, it will be easier for us to understand an important characteristic of the object: what one could call its coefficient of depth. Pierre as imaged appears to me at a certain distance. Here the contamination of the motor analogon by its vicinity cannot serve as a valid explanation. But, besides, is Pierre at a given distance from me? This is not possible; he does not bear any relation to me, because he is irreal; he is no more five metres from me than a hundred. Will one say that he appears to me as ‘seen by me at five metres’? But, precisely, when I produce Pierre as imaged, I do not have any idea that I see him, but I try to put myself in immediate communication with an absolute. Pierre is not five metres from anyone; he appears with the size and aspect that he would have in perception if he were five metres from me, that is all. This is a kind of absolute quality. We have tried to show, just now, that the object appears in the image as a complex of absolute qualities. But on the other hand, each of these absolute qualities draws its origin from a sensible appearance of the object, and is therefore a relative quality; the image does not create absolute conditions of existence for the object: it carries the sensible qualities to the absolute, without however stripping them of their essential relativity. Naturally, there results a contradiction, but one that is not glaring, due to the foggy character of the irreal object. Already in perception, I attribute to Pierre an absolute height and a natural distance in relation to me. Consequently, when I reproduce Pierre as imaged, I give him his absolute height and his natural distance. But these qualities no longer appear as relations of Pierre to other objects: they are internalized: the absolute distance, the absolute height have become intrinsic characteristics of the object. This is so true that I can reproduce as imaged my friend R who is very short with the shortness of his height and with his absolute distance, and do so without making appear any object that can make this smallness recognizable. In perception I can never know of an object if it is large or small unless I have the means of comparing it with other objects or with myself. The object as imaged, on the other hand, carries its smallness internally. Without doubt I can vary, as imaged, the height and the distance of objects. But what varies when, for example, I imagine a man seen from afar and who is approaching are the internal qualities of this irreal man: his colour, his visibility, his absolute distance. It cannot be his distance in relation to me, which does not exist.

Thus we are led by this analysis to recognize that the space as imaged has a much more qualitative character than does the area of perception: every spatial determination of an object as imaged is presented as an absolute property.² This is in accord with the remark I made in a previous section: one cannot count in image the columns of the Panthéon . The space of the irreal object is without parts. But, it may be said, must we not say that for every irreal object Berkeley’s formula ‘esse est percipi’ is true without reservation, and in that case does one not have to remark that consciousness expressly confers this space without parts on the irreal object? To tell the truth, consciousness expressly affirms nothing of irreal space: it is the object that it aims at and the object is presented as a concrete totality that includes, among other qualities, extension. The space of the object, like its colour or its form, is therefore irreal.

Let us now suppose that I produce in image Pierre in his room in rue D … Here the question is more complicated since a topographical spatial determination is added to the absolute extension of the irreal object. I make the observation, on this occasion, that this location is produced by a special intention that is added to the central imaging intentions. It is a matter of more specification. It can happen that, without this specification, the object appears to me with a vague spatial atmosphere: Pierre is vaguely ‘surrounded by his room’. But this, vaguely included in the affective analogon, is not explicitly affirmed. For the room to be given in fact as the container of Pierre requires that it be the correlate of a specific act of affirmation, synthetically united with the act of consciousness that constitutes Pierre as imaged. But once this affirmation is made, the room that appears is not given in its relations with the real space where I live. One could hardly indicate a vague feeling of direction that, moreover, does not necessarily accompany the object. For the rest, of course, the room appearing with ‘normal’ proportions, or, said better, ‘natural size’, is never situated in relation to my real space: if not, the distance from my body would at least be outlined in the form of perspective, since the room does not appear to me here where I am, but over there where it is. Actually, it is posited starting from Pierre, as his surroundings, his environment. Certainly, one could not make it an intrinsic quality of Pierre and yet it does not have relations of pure contiguity, of externality, with him. Produced by a secondary intention, which has sense only in relation to the central intention, it can be called a belonging of the principal object.

Of course, it is indeed the genuine room that I aim at, just as I aim at the genuine Pierre. But it is given as absent; and at the same time its character is deeply modified since the external relation of contiguity that links it to Pierre is transformed into an internal relation of belonging.

* * *

It is perhaps more difficult to admit that the time of the object as imaged is an irreality. Is the object not in fact contemporaneous with the consciousness that forms it and is the time of this consciousness not indeed real? Nevertheless, to reason well on this matter, it is necessary to review once more the principle that has guided us thus far: the object of consciousness differs in nature from the consciousness of which it is the correlate. It is therefore by no means proven that the time of the flowing of the image consciousness is the same as the time of the imaged object. We will see, on the contrary, by means of several examples, that the two durations are radically separated.

There are irreal objects that appear to consciousness without any temporal determination. If, for example, I represent a centaur to myself, this irreal object belongs neither to the present, nor to the past, nor to the future. Moreover, it does not endure in front of the consciousness that flows, it remains invariable. I who represent the centaur to myself submit to external invitations, I maintain the irreal object before me with more or less effort: but, from one second to another of my time, the centaur has not varied, has not aged, has not ‘taken’ a second more: it is timeless. One can be tempted to give it my present, as earlier one gave my space to Pierre as imaged. But we shall soon find out that this would be to commit the same error. Certainly the consciousness to which this centaur appears is present. But the centaur is not: it does not have any temporal determination.

Other objects, without being more located, contain a sort of contracted, compressed duration, a timeless synthesis of particular durations. For example, the smile of Pierre that I represent to myself at this moment is neither his smile of yesterday evening nor his smile of this morning. It is no longer a case of a concept but of an irreal object that gathers in an invariable synthesis the diverse smiles that endured and disappeared. So that, in its very immutability, it conserves a ‘depth’ that distinguishes it from the centaur of which we just spoke.

These objects, in every way, remain immobile before the flux of consciousness. At the extreme opposite, we find objects that flow more quickly than consciousness. It is well known that most of our dreams are extremely short. Nevertheless the dreamed drama can occupy several hours, several days. It is impossible to make this drama that is spread through a whole day coincide with the rapid flow of the consciousness that dreams it. One will perhaps attempt to reduce the duration of the dream to that of the dream consciousness, to make of the dreamed story a rapid procession of images. But this explanation is very ambiguous. What should we understand here by image? Will one speak of the imaging consciousness or of the imaged object? If it is a case of the imaging consciousness, it is evident that it can flow neither faster nor slower than it does flow: all that one can say is that it absolutely fills (remplit) its duration and that it is this very fullness (plénitude) that measures this duration. In what concerns the imaged object, can one truly speak of a more rapid succession? But we are here not in the cinema, where the projection of a film shot more rapidly gives the impression of ‘slow motion’. The objects, on the contrary, flow more slowly than the real consciousness, since the consciousness really lives a few seconds while the irreal world endures several hours. A very rapid procession of images never gives the impression of a very long duration, if that procession is referred to the time of the consciousness. The error here comes from identifying image and consciousness. One then supposes that a very rapid succession of images is, at the same time, a very rapid succession of consciousnesses and as by hypothesis (since the sleeper is cut off from the world) every element of comparison fails, one believes that the relations are conserved between the different contents. This thesis, which returns us to the principle of immanence and all its contradictory consequences, must be abandoned. In vain one might object that the irreal object is constituted by several truncated scenes that I imagine form a coherent whole. For I mean to say nothing else. Certainly, I imagine that these scenes have a very long duration. It is necessary therefore to admit here a phenomenon of belief; a positional act. The duration of irreal objects is the strict correlate of this act of belief: I believe that these truncated scenes are welded one to another in a coherent whole, which is to say I join the present scenes with past scenes by means of the empty intentions accompanying positional acts.³ Moreover, I believe that these scenes together occupy a duration of several hours. Thus the duration of the object as imaged is the transcendent correlate of a special positional act and consequently participates in the irreality of the object.⁴

This conclusion also emerges from the examination of intermediary cases, which is to say those where the irreal duration of the object and the real duration of the consciousness flow in parallel, to the same rhythm. I can take ten minutes to imagine a scene that endured for ten minutes. But it would be puerile to think that it would thereby be more detailed. The time that I take to reconstitute it is of no importance. What is important is the determination of irreal duration that I give it.

There is an absenteeism of time as of space. At the limit, the time of an irreal scene exactly duplicating a presently unfolding real scene remains in irreal time. If, while Pierre is pouring himself a drink behind my back, I represent to myself that he is pouring himself a drink at this moment, the two presents, the irreal present and the real present, do not coincide. On one side we have the real elements of consciousness and the real movement of Pierre, which are contemporaneous, on the other the present of irreal movement. Between these two presents, there is no simultaneity.⁵ The apprehension of the one coincides with the annihilation of the other.

These diverse characteristics of irreal duration are fully comprehensible only if one conceives this duration, as with irreal space, as without parts. Duration is also a quality of the object and, no more than one can align in image the columns of the Panthéon, one cannot make explicit and count the moments of an irreal action. It is rather a case of a vague consciousness of flow and a coefficient of duration projected onto the object as an absolute property. What one should not believe, however, is that this duration without parts resembles in any way Bergsonian duration. Rather, it is similar to the spatialized time that this philosopher describes in Time and Free Will: An Essay on the Immediate Data of Consciousness. That is, the duration of the imaged object, as a consequence of the principle of quasi-observation, has undergone a radical alteration in its structure, or better said, an inversion: the event, the movement that one wants to realize as imaged appears as commanding the preceding moments. I know where I am going and what I want to produce. This is why no development of the image can surprise me, whether I produce a fictitious scene or one of the past. In both cases the preceding moments with their contents serve as means of reproducing the following moments considered as ends.

There are, moreover, many cases where the time of the object is pure succession without temporal location. If I represent to myself the course of a centaur or a naval battle, these objects do not belong to any moment of duration. They are neither past, nor future, nor above all present. There is nothing present but the real me while I represent them. They are without attachments, without temporal relations with any other object or my own duration, they are characterized only by an internal duration, by the pure before–after relation, which is limited to marking the relation of different states of the action.

Thus the time of irreal objects is itself irreal. It has none of the characteristics of the time of perception: it does not flow (in the way that the duration of this piece of sugar that is dissolving does), it can be extended or contracted at will and remain the same, it is not irreversible. It is a shadow of time, which accords well with this shadow of an object, with its shadow of space. Nothing separates the irreal object from me more surely: the imaginary world is entirely isolated, I can enter it only by irrealizing myself.

When we speak of the world of irreal objects, we use an inexact expression for greater convenience. A world is a dependent whole, in which each object has its determinate place and maintains relations with the other objects. The very idea of world implies for its objects the following double condition: they must be strictly individuated; they must be in balance with an environment. This is why there is no irreal world, because no irreal object fulfils this double condition.

First, objects are not individuated. There is at once too much and not enough in them. First, too much: these phantom-objects are ambiguous, elusive, at once themselves and things other than themselves, they are made the supports of contradictory qualities. Often, to push the reflective analysis to the end, one discovers that they are several in one. This essential ambiguity of the irreal object appears to me to be one of the principal factors of fear in imagination. A clear and distinct perception is, from a certain point of view, eminently reassuring. Without doubt a tiger suddenly appearing will engender fear: but it will be another kind of fear. If we feel fear in the night, in solitude, it is because the imaginary objects that haunt us are, by nature, suspect. And that suspect character comes from the fact that an object as imaged is never frankly itself. Everything that we fear in this way is impossible in so far as the objects escape the principle of individuation. I willingly say that this ambiguity constitutes the only depth of the object as imaged. It represents in itself a semblance of opacity.

On the other hand, there is not enough in an irreal object for it to constitute a strict individuality. None of its qualities are pushed to the limit. This is what I called in the first part of this book an essential poverty. When I perceive Pierre, it is always possible for me to approach him close enough to see the grains of his skin, to observe his pores with a magnifying glass; while I am there, there still remains for me the theoretical possibility of examining his cells under a microscope and so on unto infinity. This infinity is implicitly contained in my current perception, it overflows it infinitely by all that I can specify about him at each moment. This is what constitutes the ‘solidity’ of real objects. Inversely, the character of Pierre as imaged is to be sparse. This object that I pretend to produce in its totality and as an absolute is basically reduced to a few meagre relations, a few spatial and temporal determinations, which, without doubt, have a sensible aspect, but which are stunted, which contain nothing more than I have explicitly posited – aside from that vague ambiguity of which I spoke. Without doubt I can indeed still affirm that I could, if I wanted, approach this irreal object, see it under a magnifying glass (irreally), under a microscope. But I also know that the new qualities that appear are not already in the object in an implicit state. They are added synthetically and it requires a particular intention of my consciousness to affirm that the new object that appears to me is also the old seen under a new aspect. I can therefore at any instant stunt the existence of the irreal object, I am not carried along despite myself to making its qualities explicit: it exists only as much as I know it and want it.

It is for this reason that the voluntary modifications that I can bring to the object can produce only two sorts of effect: either they will bring no changes but themselves to the objects – or they carry in them radical alterations affecting its identity. For example, if I give to Pierre as imaged a flat or turned-up nose, it will not result in his face having a new aspect. Or, on the other hand, if I seek to represent to myself my friend with a broken nose it can happen that I fail to and that, carried along to complete the form thus produced, I make appear the face of a boxer that is no longer at all Pierre’s: as it happens in dreams when the least change in the facial features brings about a change of personality. In both cases I have missed what I was aiming at, which is to say the genuine transformation of Pierre’s face, a transformation in which something remains and something disappears and where what remains takes on a new value, a new aspect, all in conserving his identity. The irreal changes are inefficient or radical: this is what one could call the law of all or nothing. There would be a threshold below which the changes would not be efficient for the total form, above which they bring with them the constitution of a new form, without relation to the preceding one. But the threshold itself, the position of balance, cannot be reached.⁶

Nevertheless it is often said: ‘Yes, I imagine very well what the head would be like with a top hat etc.’. Thus Goethe claimed he could produce a flower as a bud, make it grow, blossom, open, close, shed its petals, etc. But it seems to me that these affirmations that contradict my thesis are not absolutely sincere. Without doubt, one can indeed make a top hat appear, and also the figure of Pierre. Perhaps one sees them simultaneously, perhaps one can even see Pierre’s face below the top hat. But what one can never see as imaged is the effect of a top hat on Pierre’s face: one would in fact require a share of passivity and ignorance in this contemplation; it would require that at a given moment we can cease to produce this synthetic form in order to note the result. Thus painters after putting a spot on a painting step back and forget themselves as painters in order to submit to the result as spectator. This is what is impossible in imaging consciousness. Only, and we will come back to this, the mind surpasses this impossibility; it makes a sort of spasmodic effort to realize the contact and this effort misses its target, but it is at the same time the indication of the synthesis that must be effected: this appears as a limit, an ideal; face and hat should have been held together in the same act. One will reach that point, one touches the target, one almost guesses the effect that must be obtained. But suddenly everything collapses leaving the subject irritated but not overcome; or else everything changes and a head appears under a top hat, only it is not Pierre’s. One nevertheless declares ‘I represent to myself very well the head that he would have’, because it seems that one was very close to the target, a little short, a little beyond – and that a little correction of range would have sufficed to reach it.

Nevertheless, one might say, I can make irreal objects move. We must distinguish between will and spontaneity. The imaging consciousness is an act that is formed at a stroke by will or pre-willing spontaneity. But only the pre-willing spontaneity can bring final developments from this consciousness without the primitive object disintegrating. I can indeed produce by willed fiat an irreal object in motion, on the express condition that the movement appears at the same time as the object: it is then the movement (created at a stroke by imaging apprehension of kinaesthetic data) that constitutes the very stuff of the object; one could say that what appears to me is not a fist in motion but a movement that is fist. But it is impossible for me to animate afterwards by will an irreal object that is first given as immobile. Nevertheless, what the will cannot obtain could be produced by the free spontaneity of consciousness. One knows in fact that the real noetic elements of the imaging consciousness are knowledge, movement, affectivity. An imaging consciousness can appear suddenly; it can of itself vary freely and conserve for a moment its essential structure: for example, there can be a free development of the affective factor, evolution of the knowledge, etc. There result for the irreal object correlative to this consciousness variations that will continue in respecting its identity while the essential structure of the consciousness is conserved. But it must be added that, in the state of normal vigilance, these structures do not delay their disintegration, and that the objects as imaged do not have a very long life. It appears to me that one can identify these free transformations of the object as imaged with what Kant calls, in his Critique of Judgement, the free play of the imagination. But the will quickly reclaims its rights: one wants to develop the image and everything is broken (except sometimes in hypnagogic hallucinations, when consciousness catches itself. It happened to me that, aggravated by seeing a luminous wheel turning clockwise, I wanted to make it turn in the opposite direction and it did not happen. Of course, one must not understand this curious phenomenon as a resistance of the object to consciousness but as a resistance of consciousness to itself – as when the fact that we do not want to produce the obsessive representation brings us naturally to produce it).

Thus I can produce at will – or almost – the irreal object that I want, but I cannot make of it what I want. If I want to transform it, I must in fact create other objects; and between them there will necessarily be holes. From this, the object as imaged acquires a discontinuous, jerky character: it appears, disappears, reappears and is no longer the same; it is immobile and it is in vain that I try to give it movement: I can succeed only by producing a movement without the moving body that I attribute to it in vain. Then all of a sudden it reappears in motion. But all these changes do not come from it: just as the movements of this beautiful violet spot which remains in my eyes after I have looked at the electric lamp, do not come from the lamp but from the spontaneous movements and the willed movements of my eyeballs. Thus in the irreal object there is one sole power and it is negative. It is a force of passive resistance. The object is not individualized: here is a primary reason why the irreal does not constitute a world. In the second place, every irreal object carrying its time and space with it is presented without any solidarity with any other object. There is nothing that I am obliged to accept at the same time as it and by it: it has no environment, it is independent, isolated – by defect and not by excess; it acts on nothing and nothing acts on it: it is without consequence in the strong sense of the term. If I want to represent to myself as imaged a somewhat long scene, I must produce in jerks isolated objects in their totality and establish between these objects, by means of empty intentions and decrees, ‘intramundane’ connections.

Thus consciousness is constantly surrounded by a cortège of phantom-objects. These objects, although having at first sight a sensible aspect, are not the same as those of perception. Without doubt they can be plants or animals but just as easily virtues, kinds, relations. As soon as we fix our look on one of them, we find ourselves confronted by strange beings that escape the laws of the world. They are always given as indivisible totalities, absolutes. Ambiguous, poor and dry at the same time, appearing and disappearing in jerks, they are given as a perpetual ‘elsewhere’, as a perpetual evasion. But the evasion to which they invite us is not only that which would make us flee our current condition, our concerns, our boredoms; they offer us an escape from all the constraints of the world, they seem to be presented as a negation of the condition of being in the world, as an anti-world.⁷

II. CONDUCT IN THE FACE OF THE IRREAL

It has often been remarked that:

the evocation of images brought into play by a central associative mechanism of sensory excitations can have the same effects as a direct stimulus. It has already been indicated that the idea of darkness brings with it a pupillary dilation, the image of a close object brings with it reflexes of accommodation with convergence and contraction of the pupil, the thought of a disgusting object brings with it the reaction of vomiting and the expectation of a tasty dish when one is hungry brings with it an immediate salivation.⁸

According to the above text – and a mass of others like it – the image, which is to say the irreal object, would quite simply provoke conduct in the way that perception does. Like it or not, this view implies that the image is a detached bit, a piece of the real world. Only a reborn sensation, undoubtedly more feeble than a perception, but of the same nature, could provoke the real and perceptible movement that is a pupillary dilation. For us, who have distinguished from the outset between the real imaging consciousness and the irreal object, it is impossible to admit a causal relation that would go from object to consciousness. The irreal cannot be seen, touched, smelled, except irreally. Reciprocally, it can act only on an irreal object. It is undeniable, however, that the different reflexes cited occur when images are constituted. But in every image there is a layer of real existences, it is this that we have called the imaging consciousness. Should we not rather seek on this side the real origin of these real movements?

Two layers of a complete imaging attitude must be distinguished: the primary or constituent layer – and the secondary layer, commonly called the reaction to the image. On the ground of perception a parallel distinction is drawn between the perceptual act properly so called and the affective or ideo-motor reactions that join it in the unity of one synthesis. I have spoken thus far only of the primary or constituent layer, which is to say the real elements that, in the consciousness, exactly correspond to the irreal object. But we must also remember that we are capable of a second-order reaction, love, hatred, admiration, etc., of the irreal object that we have constituted and that, although of course these feelings are given with the analogon properly so called in the unity of the same consciousness, they nevertheless represent different articulations, the logical and existential priority having to be accorded to the constituent elements. There are therefore intentions, movements, knowledge, feelings that combine to form the image and intentions, movements, feelings, pieces of knowledge that represent our more or less spontaneous reaction to the irreal. The former are not free: they obey a directing form, a primary intention and are absorbed in the constitution of the irreal object. They are not aimed at in themselves, they do not at all exist for themselves, but through them consciousness aims at the object as imaged. The other factors of the psychic synthesis are more independent, they are posited for themselves and develop freely. They are easily recognized, classified and named: they do not confer new qualities on the object. Consequently, when one speaks of feelings and movements that one claims to be ‘reactions to the irreal object’, it is indispensable to distinguish between these two layers of consciousness.

Vomiting, nausea, pupillary dilation, reflexes of ocular convergence, erection appear to me to belong, with their corresponding feelings, to the strictly constituent layer. Nothing is easier to comprehend if one admits with me that the image is not a simple content of consciousness among others, but is a psychic form. As a result, the whole body collaborates in the constitution of the image. Without doubt the function of certain movements is more especially to ‘configure the object’, but in the immediate constitution of this object there enters one part spontaneous mime. It is not because the irreal object appears close to me that my eyes are going to converge; but it is the convergence of my eyes that mimes the proximity of the object. Similarly, although a feeling is indeed something other than a simple physiological upheaval, there are no feelings without an ensemble of corporeal phenomena. The very feeling of disgust, which is absorbed in constituting in the object the quality ‘disgusting’, which is entirely objectified and becomes conscious of itself only in the form of an irreal property, this very feeling is produced by the intentional animation of certain physiological phenomena. Without doubt, for most people the affective element that constitutes the analogon is reduced to a simple emotional abstraction. In that case the affective factor is entirely exhausted in the constituent act. We are conscious only of this special nuance of the object, the quality ‘repugnant’; and nothing that we can add to it later can confer a new quality on the object, but would belong to the secondary layer. It is thus that certain people at an account of an accident or a picture of misery exclaim ‘That is dreadful’ or ‘How horrible’ and mime the horror by means of some schematic gestures. It is evident that they have been little touched and that the scene’s character ‘horrible’ or ‘dreadful’ has been conferred on the images that they formed by means of a simple affective schema. But it can also happen that the imaging feelings are violent and develop with force. In that case, they are not exhausted in constituting the object, they envelop it, dominate it and carry it along. Nausea and vomiting, for example, are not an effect of the ‘repugnant’ character of the irreal object, but the consequences of the free development of the imaging feeling, which in some way surpasses its function and, if I may say so, is ‘over-zealous’. This is produced above all when the affective terrain that feeds the constituent consciousness is already prepared. Piéron implicitly recognizes this when he says, in the text that I have cited, that the images of agreeable dishes cause salivation ‘when one is hungry’. Likewise, one must already be aroused or close to becoming so for the evocation of voluptuous scenes to provoke an erection. In a general way it is not the irreal object that provokes these manifestations; it is the constituent forces that are prolonged and expanded far beyond their function.

The fate of these manifestations is variable. It can happen that they are incorporated, like the feeling or the mime from which they flow, into the very constitution of the object. That is the case, for example, with slight nauseas. But if they surpass normal intensity, these reactions will attract attention and be posited for themselves. Vomiting, for example, could not be merged simply into the general imaging attitude and pass unperceived. But it is to be noted that at the moment when these reactions are becoming the real object of our consciousness, the irreal object of the preceding consciousness will have passed into the state of memory. Consciousnesses will therefore follow one another in the following order: consciousness of a repugnant irreal object; consciousness of real vomiting given in connection with the mnemic consciousness of the repugnant object. That is to say of course that the irreal object will be given in the consciousness of vomiting as the real creator of this real vomiting. By this very fact it loses its irreality and we fall into the illusion of immanence: thus memory confers on it a quality that the current consciousness could not have given it: that of being the real cause of physiological phenomena. So, as we have seen, if the immediate consciousness can distinguish by nature the object as imaged from the real object present, memory confuses these two types of existence because the irreal objects and the real objects appear to it as memories, which is to say as past. It has seemed to me that these differences of force in the constituent feelings explain what are called the differences in vivacity in the imagination. It is not true that the irreal objects have more or less force or vivacity depending on the person. An irreal object cannot have force since it does not act. But to produce a more or less vivacious image is to react with more or less vivacity to the producing act and, at the same time, to attribute to the object the power of giving rise to these reactions.

It must not, however, be believed that the irreal object, a final term, an effect that is never itself a cause, is a pure and simple epiphenomenon and that the development of consciousness remains exactly the same whether or not this object exists. Certainly, the irreal always receives and never gives. Certainly there is no means of giving it the urgency, the exigency, the difficulty of a real object. However the following fact cannot be ignored: before producing a roast chicken as imaged, I was hungry and yet I did not salivate; before producing a voluptuous scene as imaged, I was perhaps aroused, perhaps my body, after a long period of chastity, had a kind of diffuse sexual desire: but I had no erection. One could not therefore deny that my hunger, my sexual desire, my disgust underwent a significant modification while passing through the imaging state. They were concentrated, made more precise, and their intensity increased. There remains therefore a phenomenological description to be made: how does the passage through the imaging stage modify the desire in this way?

Desire and disgust exist at first in a diffuse state, without precise intentionality. In being organized with a piece of knowledge into an imaging form, the desire is made precise and is concentrated. Enlightened by the knowledge, it projects its object outside itself. But it must be understood by this that it becomes conscious of itself. The act by which the feeling becomes conscious of its exact nature, is limited and defined, this act is one with that by which it is given a transcendent object. And this is readily understood: desire in fact is defined by its effect, likewise repulsion, contempt, etc. It is impossible to think without contradiction that the image can be linked to desire from outside: this would be to suppose for it a kind of anonymity of nature, a perfect indifference to the object on which it will fix.

Instead the affective state, being consciousness, could not exist without a transcendent correlate. However, when feeling is directed on at a real thing, currently perceived, the thing sends back to it, like a screen, the light that it receives from it. And so, by a game of back and forth, the feeling is constantly enriched, at the same time that the object imbibes affective qualities.⁹ There follows, for the feeling, a particular depth and richness. The affective state follows the course of attention, it develops with each new discovery of perception, it assimilates all the aspects of the object; as a result its development remains unpredictable because, while remaining spontaneous, it is subordinated to the development of its real correlate: at each moment perception overflows it and sustains it and its solidity, its depth come from it being confused with the perceived object: each affective quality is so deeply incorporated in the object that it is impossible to distinguish between what is felt and what is perceived.

At the time of the constitution of the irreal object, knowledge plays the role of perception: feeling is incorporated with it. Thus the irreal object is born. This is the moment to repeat what I have constantly maintained: the irreal object exists, it exists as irreal, as inactive, of this there is no doubt; its existence is undeniable. Feeling behaves therefore in the face of the irreal as in the face of the real. It seeks to merge into it, to embrace it, to feed off it. Only, this irreal, so well specified, so well defined, is empty; or, if one prefers, it is the simple reflection of the feeling. Feeling therefore feeds on its own reflection. Precisely because it knows (connaît) itself at present as disgust with this dish, it will develop to the point of nausea. One could speak here of a kind of affective dialectic. But, of course, the role of the object differs completely from what it was in the world of perception. There my repugnance, guiding my disgust, made me discover in the real dish a thousand repugnant details, which in the end provoked vomiting. In the case of imaging disgust, on the other hand, the object is indispensable but as witness. It is posited beyond the affective developments as the unity of these developments, but without it the reaction of disgust could not be produced of itself. If the disgust to be reinforced swells inordinately and reaches the point of vomiting, this is because it is faced with the irreal object; it reacts to itself as disgust at that object. As for the real drive of this development, it is a kind of vertigo: it is because it knows itself as this disgust that, without receiving the same enrichment, the disgust inflates emptily. There is therefore something sui generis in this disgust in the face of the irreal. It is irreducible to disgust in the face of perception. There is in it first of all a kind of freedom or, if one prefers, autonomy: it determines itself. But that is not all: it participates, in some way, in the emptiness of the object to which it is addressed. It can inflate to the point of nausea, nothing can prevent the fact that it inflates of its own accord. It lacks that part of passivity that makes for the richness of the feelings that constitute the real. It sustains itself by means of a kind of continuous autocreation, a kind of restless tension: it cannot let itself go without vanishing with its object, it is exhausted in its affirmation and at the same time in inflating, in reacting to itself. Hence a considerable nervous expenditure. Everyone can, moreover, in consulting their own experience recognize that it is exhausting to maintain facing the repugnant or graceful character of an irreal object. But, one may say, at least the vomiting is undergone. Yes, without doubt, but to the extent to which we undergo our irritations, our obsessive ideas or the tunes that we repetitively hum. This is a spontaneity that escapes our control. But nothing positive on the side of the object can compensate, from one end to the other of the development, for this quality of nothingness that characterizes the whole process; we were moved, we were carried, we vomited because of nothing.

Let us take a real object, this book for example. It is entirely suffused by our affectivity and as such it appears to us with this or that affective quality. These qualities enter into the constitution of the perceived object and, as such, cannot be detached and appear separately to the gaze of reflection. We have just examined the corresponding layer in the imaging consciousness. But, faced with this book, I do not remain inactive, I act in this or that fashion: I pick it up or put it down, I do not like its binding, I make judgements of fact or of value. These diverse reactions do not aim at constituting it but rather at indicating my orientation in relation to it. Without doubt, these reactions appear to the unreflective consciousness as qualities of this object. But these qualities are directly given as relations to me: it is the book that I like, that I placed on the table, that I should read this evening. Moreover, they are only posited on the object and are easily detached to be given in themselves and for themselves, as judgements, feelings, volitions, to the reflective gaze. It is only here that one can speak of conduct in the strict sense of the term, because this conduct is separable and can appear as such to reflective consciousness.

There exists, of course, similar behaviour in the face of the irreal. It is advisable to distinguish it carefully from the simple development of imaging feeling. One easily understands the difference if one envisages the following two cases: in the first, for example, an unspecified thought awakens my love for Annie or my indignation at Pierre. This love or this indignation is synthetically united with a piece of knowledge, passes through the imaging stage and gives rise to the irreal face of Annie or the gesture that Pierre made yesterday. In this case the image is given as the sense, the theme, the pole of unification of the spontaneous affective development. Without doubt, these are marred by an essential ‘emptiness’, without doubt they are quickly exhausted or change in nature because they cannot feed on a real object. But all the processes are free, unreflective, automatic in the sense I have given this term above. In a word it is my love for Annie that makes her irreal face appear and not the irreal face of Annie that provokes a surge of love for her. Similarly if Pierre yesterday made an offensive gesture that upset me, what is reborn at first is the indignation or the shame. These feelings grope blindly a moment in order to understand themselves and then, enlightened by their meeting with a piece of knowledge, make the offending gesture spring up.

But a second case can be produced: once the image is constituted, I can deliberately react to it by means of a new feeling, or judgement, which is not carried with the irreal object in the unity of one and the same constitutive movement, but which is clearly posited as a reaction, which is to say a beginning, the appearance of a new synthetic form. For example, I can produce an image that does not have in itself a strong affective charge and yet be indignant or rejoice before that irreal object. Yesterday, for example, a graceful gesture of Annie’s provoked in me a surge of tenderness. Without doubt my tenderness can, in being reborn, bring about the irreal rebirth of the gesture suffused with affectivity. Without doubt also I can bring about the rebirth of both the gesture and the tenderness, both retaining their date and their ‘absenteeism’.¹⁰ But it could also be that I reproduce the gesture in order to bring about the rebirth of the tenderness. In this case, what I aim at is neither yesterday’s tenderness nor Annie’s gesture for themselves; I want to feel a real tenderness, present but analogous to that of yesterday. I want to be able, as one rightly says in current language, to ‘regain’ my feelings of yesterday. It is this new situation that we want to envisage.

When we reproduce the charming gesture that moved us yesterday, it appears to us that the situation that is reborn is strictly the same as that of the day before: this gesture that, when real, made such a strong impression on us, why would it not do it again now that it is there as imaged? However, the process is radically different. In the first case, which is to say yesterday, it is the real gesture that provokes my tenderness. It appeared to me as an entirely unexpected, though natural, phenomenon. At the same time this surge was given sometimes in the form of a quality of the object, sometimes under its subjective aspect, and it probably appeared first under its objective aspect. Today, on the other hand, this tenderness appears at first as an end, although in a more or less clear way; the reflective knowledge therefore preceded the feeling itself and the feeling is aimed at in its reflective form. Besides, the object is reproduced precisely in order to provoke the feeling. In a word, we already know (connaissons) its connection with that affective state and we make the object appear because it contains as one of its qualities the power to give rise to this surge of tenderness. This, of course, is a case of a determination that is still abstract, it is a virtuality in the object. But it follows that the object reproduced is already not completely the same as that which we want to reproduce. Yesterday’s gesture in fact was given as provoking my tenderness only in the course of its performance, which is to say after a certain duration and, precisely, when this tenderness appeared. On the other hand, the power of the irreal object appears with it, as one of its absolute qualities. In a word, the further developments of my affective state are foreseen and the whole evolution of this state depends on my foresight. This is not that it always obeys, but that when it does not obey it is conscious of its disobedience.

But on the other hand, we know that the irreal object cannot perform a causal action; in other words the irreal object cannot produce this tenderness that I want to find again. Once the object is reconstituted, I must determine myself to be tender in the face of it. In a word, I will affirm that the irreal object acts on me, while being immediately conscious that there is not, that there cannot be, real action and that I contort myself in order to mime this action. Perhaps a feeling that I will call tenderness will appear when I want to recall yesterday’s surge. But this is no longer an ‘affection’ in the sense that the object no longer affects me. My feeling, still here, is entirely activity, entirely tension; it is played rather than felt. I affirm that I feel tender, I know that I should do, I realize tenderness in me. But this tenderness is not reflected in the irreal object; it has not fed on the inexhaustible depths of the real: it remains cut off from the object, suspended; it is given to reflection as an effort to be joined with that irreal gesture that remains outside its influence and that it does not reach. What we seek in vain to enact here is receptivity, passion in the seventeenth-century sense of the term. One could speak of a dance in the face of the irreal, in the way that ballet dancers dance around a statue. The dancers open their arms, stretch out their hands, smile, offer themselves completely, approach and flee; but the statue is not affected: there is no real relation between it and the ballet dancers. Likewise, our conduct in the face of the object cannot really reach it, qualify it, any more than it can touch us in return: for it is in the heaven of the irreal, beyond all reach.

There results for our tenderness not a lack of sincerity, but rather a lack of casualness, docility, richness. The object does not sustain it, does not nourish it, does not communicate to it that force, that suppleness, that unforesee-ability that makes for the depth of a feeling-passion. There is always between feeling-passion and feeling-action the difference that one can note between the real distress of a cancer victim and the pain of a psychaesthenic who believes they are suffering from cancer. Without doubt we could find, in the case of imagined pain, an absolutely wild person, having lost all control, thrown into a panic, nervous and despairing. Nothing of all this – neither the starts, nor the cries when the limb they imagine to be ailing is touched – is acted in the absolute sense of the word, which is to say it is neither ‘play-acting’ nor mythomania. It is indeed true that such victims cannot prevent themselves from screaming, perhaps even less so than in the case of real suffering. But nothing – neither starts nor moans – can make it real suffering. The distress is indeed there, without doubt, but it confronts the victim as imaged, inactive, passive, irreal; the victim struggles before it despite himself, but none of the cries or the gestures are provoked by it. At the same time, the victim knows it; knows that they are not suffering; and all their energy – in contrast to that of the real cancer victim, who aims at reducing the effects of the suffering – is employed to suffer more. The victim cries in order to bring about distress, gestures in order that it will inhabit their body. In vain: nothing will fill that exasperating impression of emptiness, that constitutes the very reason and the deep nature of the cries.

From all the preceding one could conclude that there is a difference in nature between feelings in the face of the real and feelings in the face of the imaginary. For example, love completely varies according to whether its object is present or absent.

When Annie is gone, my feelings for her change in nature. No doubt I continue to give them the name of love, no doubt I deny this change, I pretend that I love Annie as much and in the same way as when she is present. But it is not so. Of course, knowledge and general conduct are preserved intact. I know that Annie has this or that quality, I continue to give her evidence of my confidence, for example I write to her telling her of everything that happens to me; if necessary, I would defend her interests as if she were here. Besides, we must recognize authentic feeling-passions: distress, melancholy, even despair into which this absence throws us. In fact, it is the real and present emptiness in our life that provokes these, more than the irreal and absent Annie; it is the fact, for example, that such gestures, such attitudes that we have hardly outlined pointlessly collapse, leaving us with the impression of an intolerable uselessness. But this ensemble represents, in some way, the negative of love. It remains that the positive element (the impulses towards Annie) is profoundly modified. My love-passion was subordinated to its object: as such I was constantly informed by it, it constantly surprised me, at each moment I had to remake it, readapt to it: it lived the very life of Annie. As long as it could be believed that the image of Annie was nothing other than Annie reborn, it could appear evident that this Annie would provoke almost the same reactions in me as the genuine Annie. But we now know that Annie as imaged is incomparable to the Annie delivered to perception. She has undergone the modification of irreality and our feeling has undergone a correlative modification. First it stopped: it ‘is made’ no more, it can barely linger in the forms that it has already taken; it has become scholastic in some way, one can give it a name, classify its manifestations: they no longer overflow their definitions, they are exactly limited by the knowledge that we have. At the same time, the feeling is degraded since its richness, its inexhaustible depth came from the object: there is always more to love in the object than I in fact love, and I know it, so that love as it was presented in the face of the real was under the thematic unity of an idea in the Kantian sense: the idea that Annie as individual reality is inexhaustible and that, correlatively, my love for her is inexhaustible. So the feeling that at each moment surpasses itself was surrounded by a vast halo of possibilities. But these possibilities have disappeared just like the real object. By an essential reversal, it is now the feeling that produces its object and the irreal Annie is no more than the strict correlate of my feelings for her. It follows that the feeling is never more than what it is. It now has a deep poverty. Finally, it has passed from passive to active: I play it, I mime it; it is wanted, it is believed. At each moment it is given as a great effort to give rebirth to the Annie of flesh, because it knows very well that it will then take shape again, it will be reincarnated. Little by little the feeling will be schematized and will congeal into rigid forms and correlatively the images that we have of Annie will become banal.¹¹ The normal evolution of knowledge and of feeling require that at the end of a certain time this love loses its own nuance: it becomes love in general and somewhat rationalized: it is now that all-purpose feeling that the psychologist and the novelist describe: it has become typical; this is because Annie is no longer there to confer on it that individuality that made it an irreducible consciousness. And even when, at this time, I would continue to conduct myself as if I loved Annie, remaining faithful to her, writing to her every day, dedicating all my thought to her, suffering being alone, something has disappeared, my love has undergone a radical impoverishment. Dry, scholastic, abstract, tended towards an irreal object that has itself lost its individuality, it evolves slowly towards absolute emptiness. It is around this moment that one writes: ‘I no longer feel close to you, I have lost your image, I am more separated from you than ever.’ This is the reason, I believe, why letters are awaited with such impatience: it is not for the news that they bring (supposing of course that we have nothing special to fear or to hope for), but for their real and concrete nature. The stationery, the black signs, the smell, etc., all these replace the weakening affective analogon; through all these I aim at a more real Annie. We have already seen the imaging role that signs can play. At the same time as it is impoverished and schematized, this love becomes much more simple. In every person that we love, for the very reason of their inexhaustible richness, there is something that surpasses us, an independence, an impenetrability, that requires perpetually renewed efforts of approximation. The irreal object conserves nothing of this impenetrability: it is never more than what we know of it. No doubt, the first few times we scrupulously affirm this impenetrability, the strange character of the loved person. But we feel nothing of the sort. It is a case of a pure knowledge that is soon attenuated and remains in suspense, due to not finding an affective matter on which to fix. So that the irreal object, as it becomes banal, will conform to our desires more than Annie ever did. The return of Annie will shatter this entire formal construction. After a period of readjustment that can be more or less long, the degraded feeling will be replaced by a real feeling. Perhaps for a moment one may miss the kindness and simplicity of Annie as imaged. But this is because one has lost the memory of the affective impoverishment that was its indispensable correlate.

Thus, from the very fact of the extraordinary difference that separates the object as imaged from the real, two irreducible classes of feeling can be distinguished: genuine feelings and imaginary feelings. By this latter adjective, I do not mean that the feelings are themselves irreal, but that they never appear except in the face of irreal objects and that the appearance of the real is enough to make them flee at once, as the sun dissipates the shadows of the night. These feelings whose essence is to be degraded, poor, jerky, spasmodic, schematic, need non-being in order to exist. Some hound their enemy in thought, make them suffer morally and physically, but remain defenceless when really in their presence. What has happened? Nothing, except that the enemy now really exists. Until now, only the feeling gave the sense of the image. The irreal was there only to permit the hate to be objectified. Now the present overflows the feeling completely and the hate remains in suspense, diverted. This is not what it hated; it is not adapted to this man of flesh and blood, very alive, new, unpredictable. What it hated was but a phantom tailored exactly to its measurements and that was its exact replica, its sense. It does not recognize this new being confronting it. Proust has shown well this abyss that separates the imaginary from the real, he has shown well that one can find no passage from one to the other and that the real is always accompanied by the collapse of the imaginary, even if there is no contradiction between the two, because the incompatibility comes from their nature and not from their content. It must be added that, due to the very fact of the essential poverty of images, the imaginary actions that I plan have no consequences but those that I want to give them. If I strike my enemy in image, blood will not flow or it will flow just as much as I want. But before the real enemy, before this real flesh, I will expect that real blood will flow, which is enough to stop me. There is therefore a continual gap between the preparation of an action and the action itself. Even if the real situation is almost that which I have imagined, it remains that it differs in nature from my imaginations. I am not surprised by the event but by the change of the universe. At the same time, the motives of the planned action disappear or change signs because they are only imaginary. If, despite everything, I perform the planned action, it is, most of the time, because I am caught short and have no other at my disposal. Or it could be by means of a kind of obstinacy that blinds itself and will not take notice of the change that occurred. This is the reason for the stiff and curt conduct of people who ‘say what they have to say’ without paying attention to their interlocutor, in order not to completely abandon the imaginary terrain before they have become too engaged to be able to retreat. Thus it is advisable to distinguish two sharply contrasted persons in us: the imaginary me with its tendencies and desires – and the real me. There are imaginary sadists and masochists, violent in imagination. At each moment, at contact with reality, our imaginary me shatters and disappears, ceding its place to the real me. For the real and the imaginary, by reason of their essences, cannot coexist. It is a case of two entirely irreducible types of objects, feelings and conducts.

Hence we may well think that individuals will have to be arranged in two great categories, according to whether they prefer to lead an imaginary life or a real life. But we must understand what a preference for the imaginary signifies. It is not at all just a case of preferring one sort of object to the other. It must not be believed, for example, that the schizophrenic and morbid dreamers in general try to substitute a brighter and more seductive irreal content for the real content of their life, and that they seek to forget the irreal character of their images by reacting to them as if they were objects currently and really present. To prefer the imaginary is not only to prefer a richness, a beauty, a luxury as imaged to the present mediocrity despite their irreal character. It is also to adopt ‘imaginary’ feelings and conduct because of their imaginary character. One does not only choose this or that image, one chooses the imaginary state with all that it brings with it; one not only flees the content of the real (poverty, disappointed love, business failure, etc.), one flees the very form of the real, its character of presence, the type of reaction that it demands of us, the subordination of our conduct to the object, the inexhaustibility of perceptions, their independence, the very way that our feelings have of developing. This factitious, solidified, slowed down, scholastic life, which for most people is but makeshift, is precisely what a schizophrenic desires. The morbid dreamer who imagines being king will not put up with an actual monarchy, not even a tyranny where all his desires would be granted. A desire is never in fact granted to the letter precisely due to the fact that an abyss separates the real from the imaginary. The object that I desire could well be given to me, but it is on another plane of existence to which I would have to adapt myself. Here it is now confronting me: if I am not in a hurry to act, I must hesitate for a long time, surprised, not recognizing this reality full and rich in consequences: I must ask myself: ‘is it really this that I wanted?’ The morbid dreamer does not hesitate: it is not this that was wanted. At first the present requires an adaptation that the morbid dreamer is no longer capable of supplying; it even needs a kind of indetermination of our feelings, a real plasticity: because the real is always new, always unforeseeable.¹² I desired the arrival of Annie: but the Annie that I desired was but the correlate of my desire. Here she is but she overflows my desire completely, an entirely new apprenticeship is needed. On the other hand, the feelings of the morbid dreamer are solemn and fixed; they always return with the same form and the same etiquette; the sick person has had all the time to construct them; nothing has been left to chance, they will not put up with the least deviation. Correlatively the features of irreal objects that correspond to them are frozen forever. Thus the dreamers can choose from a store of props the feelings they want to put on and the objects that correspond to them, as actors choose their costumes: today it will be ambition, tomorrow loving desire. Only the ‘essential poverty’ of objects as imaged can satisfy the feeling docilely, without ever surprising it, deceiving it, or guiding it. Only the irreal objects can be annihilated when the caprice of the dreamer stops, since they are but his reflection; only they have no consequences other than those one wants to draw from them. It is therefore wrong to take the world of the schizophrenic for a torrent of images with a richness and a sparkle that compensates for the monotony of the real: it is a poor and meticulous world, where the same scenes keep on being repeated, to the last detail, accompanied by the same ceremonial where everything is ruled in advance, foreseen; where, above all, nothing can escape, resist, or surprise.¹³ In a word, if the schizophrenic imagines so many amorous scenes, it is not only because his real love has been disappointed: but above all because he is no longer capable of loving.

III. PATHOLOGY OF THE IMAGINATION

Schizophrenics know very well that the objects they surround themselves with are irreal: it is for this very reason that they make them appear. The observation of Marie B is significant on this subject:

I recall the crisis that I once had: I said I was the Queen of Spain. Deep down I knew that this was not true. I was like a child who plays with a doll and who knows well that the doll is not alive but wants to be persuaded … everything appeared enchanted to me … I was like an actor who played a role and who got under the skin of the character. I was convinced … but not entirely. I was in an imaginary world.¹⁴

We meet no difficulty here. But it is totally different in the cases of nocturnal dreams, hallucinations, mirages (paréidolies): one could even say that, by substituting a new hypothesis for old theories of the image, we fall into the inverse difficulty. Having assimilated the image to sensation, Taine had no difficulty in explaining hallucination: in fact, perception is already ‘a true hallucination’. He found no difficulty until he needed to explain how, among all the hallucinations, some true and others false, we immediately distinguish images and perceptions. We who have, inversely, taken as our point of departure the fact that these subjects immediately recognize their images as such, do we not risk finding our stumbling block in the problem of hallucination? Are we not in fact dealing here with an image that is no longer recognized as an image? It is advisable to first sharpen the question.

If it is true that the hallucinator ‘takes an image for a perception’, what is signified by the words ‘takes for a perception’? Must they mean, as certain psychologists hold, that the hallucinator confers externality on the image, ‘projects’ the image into the world of perceptions? This would be simply absurd. In fact image is, as we have seen, a vague term that simultaneously signifies a consciousness and its transcendent correlate. To what therefore, in this case, could the hallucinator give externality? Certainly not the consciousness: in fact it is not possible that what is consciousness is given as something other than consciousness. The Cartesian cogito retains its rights even with psychopaths. But no more could the object of imaging consciousness be externalized, for the reason that it is already external by nature. If I form an imaging consciousness of Pierre, Pierre brings along with him his irreal space and is positioned before consciousness, he is external to it (see above). The problem is therefore entirely different: the object of the image differs from the object of perception: (1) in that it has its own space, whereas there exists an infinite space common to all perceived objects; (2) in that it is immediately given for irreal, whereas the object of perception originally puts up, as Husserl says, a claim to reality (Seinsanspruch). This irreality of the imaged object is correlative to an immediate intuition of spontaneity. Consciousness has a nonthetic consciousness of itself as a creative activity (see Part I, Chapter 2, § V, above). This consciousness of spontaneity appears to us as a transversal consciousness, which is one with the consciousness of the object; it is the very structure of the psychic state; and the way we place it renders it independent of the mental health or illness of the subject. The question is posed therefore in the following way: how do we abandon our consciousness of spontaneity, how do we feel ourselves passive before the images that in fact we form; is it true that we confer reality, which is to say a presence in flesh, on these objects that are given to a healthy consciousness as absent? Finally, since, as we have seen (Part III, § IV), perception and imaging consciousness are two alternating attitudes, is it possible that we fuse the space of the image with that of perception in the case of hallucination, as does an hallucinator who says, for example, ‘On this (real) chair I saw the (irreal) devil’?

To this last question, we can respond at once: nothing in fact proves that the patient realizes the fusions of the two spaces. After all, we have no guarantee other than the patient’s reports, which all seem subject to caution. First, as Janet remarks, it almost never happens that the patient has hallucinations (at least visual hallucinations) in the presence of the doctor – which we could interpret thus: a systematic activity in the domain of the real seems to exclude hallucinations. This is what gives, it seems, a certain efficacy to ‘tricks’ employed by the patients in order to prevent hallucinations. Such patients, who mutter and concentrate attention on what they are saying, can if need be delay for a few moments the voices that threaten or insult them. More striking perhaps is Dumas’s observation of the confused deliriums caused by the traumas of war. The soldier Crivelli, for example, seemed at first to have taken good account of the large size of the room where he was to set the stage for his delirium. But, in fact, when the doctor modified the appearance of the room, these changes had no effect on the course of the delirium. On the other hand, if Professor Dumas called out in a loud voice and very close ‘Wipe your nose!’, the patient ceased the delirium for a moment and docilely wiped his nose. Everything seems to speak here in favour of an alternation between perception and delirium. One will object, no doubt, that the oneiric confusion is rather closer to the dream than to hallucination. This I will not deny. But what concerns us here is to disentangle certain characteristics that may well be common to these two pathological forms. In a word, it seems to us that hallucination coincides with a sudden annihilation of perceived reality. It does not take place in the real world: it excludes it. This is what M. Lagache, commenting on Janet, explains so well in his recent book:

The auditory hallucination does not have the congruence of auditory perception with the environmental circumstances and especially with the present character of perception; the persecuted rarely believe they have been injured by a present person who speaks to them in the normal way; it is later that the distinction between ‘injurer’ and ‘injured’ becomes delicate; so it is unusual to witness auditory hallucinations…¹⁵

However, it does not seem to me that we should reduce hallucination, as Janet seemingly tries to do (at least with auditory hallucination, verbal motor hallucination being entirely different) to a recital accompanied by a belief that the patient forms about it. There is indeed an hallucinatory act, in my opinion; but this act is a pure event that appears suddenly to the patient while perception disappears. It remains that the patient, narrating the sensory hallucinations, locates them in the space of perception. But at first, as Lagache has shown well in connection with verbal hallucinations:

…Spatialization is not a primary quality of the auditory hallucination but depends, for one part, on intellectual data and, for the other, on motor attitudes. It is thus that the distance is infinitely variable and that the patient, according to the situation, locates the voices in a distant town or behind the wall, on the ceiling, under the floor, under the pillow.¹⁶

These few remarks suffice to show the irreal character of the location. In a word, the spatialization of hallucination closely resembles the location of the image. The uttered word could have been said in a distant town. And it is heard nonetheless. But is it even heard? No more than Pierre as imaged is seen. Lagache makes some invaluable remarks on this point:

All verbal hallucinations involve a receptive attitude towards an ideo-verbal or verbal content considered by the hallucinator to be of foreign origin. Now, to have a receptive attitude towards words is to hear. All verbal hallucination is therefore in a sense heard and one could go as far as to say that every verbal hallucination is auditory, if indeed one wants to designate by that only a receptive attitude, without assuming a sensory, acoustic character of the heard words.¹⁷

In other words, the injurious word ‘appears’ to the subject. It is there and the subject undergoes it, is in a receptive state in relation to it. But this receptivity does not necessarily imply a sensory event.

Besides, even in the case where the location is made in relation to real space (in the patient’s bedroom, for example), it must be said that this location is made after the event. On my view, visual or auditory hallucination is accompanied by a provisional collapse of perception. But when the hallucinatory attack has passed, the world reappears.¹⁸ It seems therefore natural that the patient, speaking of the scene just witnessed, gives it as a part of the surrounding world: ‘I am here, me who just saw the devil’ easily turns into ‘I just saw the devil here.’

And moreover what does being here signify for a hallucinator? Is it because the hallucinator correctly enumerates the furniture in the room that he must believe that he perceived them as we do? Let us not forget that curious type of hallucinations that are given as absolute existences but without spatio-temporal characteristics: psychic hallucinations.

Thus from whatever angle we look at it the location of hallucinations seems like a secondary problem, presenting no great difficulties of principle and subordinated to this much more general question: how can the patient believe in the reality of an image that is essentially given as an irreality?

The very statement of the problem shows us that it is a case of an alteration of belief or, if one prefers, of thesis. But this should not deceive us: the constitutive thesis of the image cannot be altered; it matters little whether or not consciousness is ‘morbid’; it is a necessity of essence that the irreal object is constituted as irreal; the spontaneity of consciousness, I have often said, is one with the consciousness of that spontaneity and consequently one cannot be destroyed without the other. This is why the excellent explanations that Lagache gives concerning motor verbal hallucination are not enough for us when it is a case of auditory hallucination (if it is really independent of verbal hallucination), visual hallucination, and psychic hallucination. It is necessary here to return to Descartes’s distinction: one can speak without knowing that one speaks, breathe without knowing that one breathes. But I cannot think that I speak without knowing that I think that I speak. Consequently the recourse of what Lagache calls introspection (which is to say the ‘orientation’ of the subject towards the psychological problem and the part the subject takes in its solution) to feelings (of influence, of imposition, of hallucination), to the diminution of vigilance, cannot reach the fact that the production of the irreal object coincides with the consciousness of its irreality. In the case of motor verbal hallucination, on the other hand, no other explanation is needed to show speech as movement being detached from and opposed to the subject.

We therefore arrive at this first conclusion: in hallucination, in the dream, nothing can destroy the irreality of the object as imaged as immediate correlate of the imaging consciousness. It seems therefore, after this first examination, that we have come to an impasse, and that we must change something in our theory or abandon one of our claims.

But perhaps hallucination is not characterized by an alteration of the primary structure of the image; perhaps it is rather given as a radical upheaval of the attitude of consciousness with regard to the irreal. In a word, perhaps it is a case of a radical alteration of all of consciousness and a change of attitude in the face of the irreal can appear only as the counterpart of a weakening of the sense of the real. A simple remark will give us a glimpse of this. Lagache observes that:

in some cases, no phenomenological data appear to distinguish alienated speech from normal speech; the patient knows from the start that they are not speaking, as if they have decided this, without one being able to grasp the concrete data that determine and motivate this decision.

And he cites a patient, Paul L., whose voice ‘remains the same when the others speak to him, but (who) knows when it is they who speak and when it is he’. Of course, this is a case of those motor hallucinations that, for more than one reason, interest us less. But we can raise the following question about them: if Paul L. suddenly knows, without change of voice and ‘as if he has decided’, that someone else is speaking, if he can practise so easily ‘the intentional social objectification’ of which Janet speaks, is this not because at the very moment when he seems to us to perceive normally, in fact he does not perceive like us?¹⁹ What is striking here is what, at the beginning of his dialogue, he decrees: it is I who speak. And as it is true, in fact, that he is speaking at that moment, we are inclined to conclude that these psychic operations are correctly executed. Then, when at the next moment he continues to speak and claims that the words emitted have been pronounced by one other than him, we suppose that he is now in a pathological process. But how can we not notice that the voice that he claims to belong to him is on the same plane as that which he claims to hear, which is an essential condition of the dialogue that he claims to be conducting? Consequently, if one is given to us as an hallucination we should, however paradoxical this might at first appear, accept the other as also hallucinatory; when the patient gives the sounds he emits as produced by himself he is hallucinating as much as when he attributes them to others. In fact, for such a phrase to appear at once to the patient as related to the preceding phrase and as pronounced by another requires that the whole conversation has an hallucinatory character, requires that in some way he dreams that the phrases that he attributes to himself are his, rather than knowing it; if not, the passage between speakers would be accompanied by changes of level so abrupt that the conversation would not be possible.²⁰ But what must be understood by that if not that he is like the famous lunatic who, according to the Stoics, ‘said that it was daytime in broad daylight’ and that in fact he perceived nothing in that conversation. All these remarks are applicable to visual and auditory hallucinations. There are undoubtedly moments when the patient, speaking with the doctor, seems to perceive correctly; it is because, at this time, he has no hallucinations. When he hallucinates he is alone, he lets himself go: does the hallucinatory event properly so called not stand out as a positive disorder on a ground of perceptual apathy where objects appear as irrealities? In my opinion, if the hallucination agrees with the world of perception it does so in so far as the latter is not perceived but dreamed by the patient in so far as the patient has become an irreality.

Perhaps we shall better grasp the consequences of this idea if we compare hallucination to a phenomenon that appears to me to have an analogous structure: obsession.

Without doubt, the stereotypical character of obsession has long been opposed to the inexhaustible imagery of hallucination. But this is to take the accounts given by patients at face value. In fact, contemporary psychiatrists are almost in agreement about the poverty of the hallucinatory material. If we put aside motor verbal hallucinations, we find that auditory hallucinations are most of the time a game of very banal insults – ‘swine’, ‘thief’, ‘drunkard’, etc. – and visual hallucinations are always of the same few forms and people. Thus, hallucination is presented as the intermittent reappearance of certain objects (auditory or visual). It is clearly approaching the obsession, which can also be the intermittent appearance of more or less stereotypical scenes. The difference does not come from the fact that the object of obsession has a subjective character whereas the object of hallucination is externalized. It is very evident, for example, that the scene of the profanation of the consecrated host that a certain patient of Janet’s represents is immediately externalized (which is to say projected into an irreal space).²¹ This is the result of the very notion of the image. Besides, if one believes many psychologists, hallucination and obsession are imposed on the mind. But it is precisely here that we must make some reservations and seek to determine exactly what ‘to impose’ signifies.

Since Janet’s work, it has been understood that obsession is not a foreign body that occupies consciousness despite itself like a stone in the liver. In fact, obsession is a consciousness; consequently it has the same characteristics of spontaneity and autonomy as all other consciousnesses. In most cases it is an imaging consciousness which has become forbidden, which means that the psychaesthenic has forbidden its formation. It is precisely because of this that the psychaesthenic forms it. At bottom, the content of the obsession is of little importance (so little that at times there is no content at all, as with that patient who has the obsession of having committed an appalling crime but who can never even imagine what that crime was); what is important is the kind of vertigo that the very prohibition provokes in the patient. The patient’s consciousness is captivated as it is in the dream, but in a different way: it is the very fear of the obsession that makes it be reborn; every effort to ‘no longer think of it’ is spontaneously transformed into obsessive thought; if at times it is forgotten for a moment the patient suddenly asks ‘But how calm I am! Why am I so calm? It is because I have forgotten … etc.’ and the obsessive object is reproduced by means of vertigo. Consciousness is in some way a victim of itself, stuck in a kind of vicious circle and all the efforts that it makes to drive out the obsessive thought are precisely the most efficacious means of making it be reborn. The patient is perfectly conscious of this vicious circle and several observations of Janet’s subjects prove that they understand very well that they are victims as well as torturers. It is in this sense and in this sense alone that the obsession ‘is imposed’ on consciousness. Not for a second does the psychaesthenic lose consciousness of its spontaneity, nor in the least the formal impression of personality; not for a moment does the psychaesthenic take the objects as imaged for real objects. If some claim that their obsessions have an hallucinatory character, this is a lie that Janet has clearly detected. Similarly the sense of the real is not dulled: even the depersonalized perceive very correctly. Nevertheless something has disappeared: the feeling of belonging to me, what Claparède called the ‘meness’ (moiïté). The fastening of phenomena to me and to not-me are correctly effected but, so to speak, on neutral ground. The violent opposition between me and not-me, so noticeable for the normal person, is attenuated. The me is already no longer a harmonious synthesis of enterprises in the external world. There are spasms of the me, a spontaneity that frees itself; it is produced as a resistance of me to myself.²²

If we turn to the hallucinator, we first find these spasms of consciousness that suddenly make an ‘auditory’ or ‘visual’ imaging consciousness appear. Without any doubt these consciousnesses are indeed spontaneous: no other consciousnesses can exist. In fact, hallucination obeys the principle of quasi-observation. Patients who present motor verbal hallucinations know that they speak by means of their own mouths, without the voice varying.²³ They are therefore invaded by this knowledge; they do not apprehend the content of their hallucinations, but suddenly their global attitude is transformed: it is no longer they who speak, it is X or Y. Naturally, it is the same for auditory and visual hallucinations, and especially for psychic hallucinations, in which the patients themselves insist on this character, since they are not diverted by the quasi-sensory nature of the appearances. Each patient therefore has an intention towards the image that can be prior to the constitution of the imaged object, a transition from the intentional knowledge to the imaging consciousness. The patients are not surprised by their hallucinations, do not contemplate them: the patients realize them. And without doubt the patients realize them, as do the obsessed, precisely because they want to escape them. One can even ask if the patients do not very often know in advance the moment of the day at which the hallucination will be produced: they must be expecting the hallucinations and the hallucinations come because they are expected. The hallucination therefore bears a resemblance to the obsession up to a certain point: in both, consciousness is attracted by the idea that it can produce a certain object. Only, in the case of the hallucinator, a very important modification has surfaced: disintegration.

No doubt the unity of consciousness, which is to say the synthetic connection of successive psychic moments, remains. This unity of consciousness is the condition of mental disorder as of the normal functioning of thought. But this unity forms the indifferent ground on which the rebellion of spontaneities stands out in the case of a psychosis of hallucination. The higher forms of psychic integration have disappeared. This signifies that there is no longer a harmonious and continuous development of thought, realized by the personal synthesis and in the course of which other thoughts can be posited as possible, which is to say momentarily envisaged without being realized. But the course of thought, while it still claims to be a coherent development, is broken at each instant by adventitious lateral thoughts that can no longer be suspended in the state of possibilities, but which are realized as a countercurrent. It is indeed always a case of vertigo but it is no longer a whole personality entering into conflict with itself: there are partial systems, which can no longer remain in the state of simple possibility, but which, hardly conceived, carry consciousness to their realization. Here, even more so than elsewhere, we must be wary of mechanistic interpretation: the morbid consciousness remains a consciousness, which is to say an unconditional spontaneity. All these phenomena have been well described by Clérambault under the name ‘little mental automatism’.²⁴

The auditory hallucination properly so called and the psycho-motor hallucination are advanced phenomena in the discourse of mental automatism … Intuitions, thought that is overtaken, the echo of thought, and nonsense are the initial phenomena of mental automatism … Certain facts of mental automatism are well known (see Séglas). The other phenomena of mental automatism have been left in the shade: on the one hand verbal phenomena: explosive words, plays on syllables, strings of words, absurdities, and nonsense; on the other hand, purely psychic phenomena, abstract intuitions, stopping abstract thought, silently reeling off memories. Such are ordinarily the initial forms of mental automatism. Ideo-verbal processes: commentaries on acts and memories, questions, matching thoughts, in general come later.²⁵

These mental disorders give rise to or develop a feeling and a conduct that absolutely differentiate the hallucinator from the psychaesthenic: what is called the syndrome of influence. The patients believe that they are under the influence of one or more persons. But what has rarely been clarified is that this belief in ‘influence’ is a way for the patients to still affirm the spontaneity of their thoughts and all their psychic acts. When a patient declares ‘I am given bad thoughts, I am made to form obscene thoughts’, we must not believe that the patient feels these bad thoughts to stagnate or float like bits of wood on water. The patient feels their spontaneity and does not dream of denying it. Only, the patient notes that this spontaneity is manifested in isolation, as a countercurrent, breaking the unity if not of consciousness then at least of personal life. This is the deep sense of the idea of influence: the patients feel that it is they, as living, animated spontaneities, who are producing these thoughts and at the same time that these thoughts are not willed. Hence the expression ‘I am made to think …’ So the syndrome of influence is nothing other than the acknowledgement, by the patient, of the existence of a counter-spontaneity. The pure and ineffable experience (which corresponds to the cogito) always gives the patient this absurd or inopportune thought as something concerning which the cogito can be effected; but at the same time the thought escapes the patient, the patient is not responsible for it, does not recognize it.

It is on this ground of influence that the first hallucinations appear. Can they even be called ‘hallucinations’ at this stage? ‘I am made to see …’, says the patient, speaking of visual hallucinations. Even there the intuition of spontaneity is not abandoned. An image is formed that is given as an image, that conserves its irreal character. It is simply posited for itself, it stops the course of thoughts. But the patient has not lost sight of the fact that the persecutors can give this or that ‘vision’ or ‘audition’ only by means of the intermediary of that patient’s own creative activity. Besides, it seems that at this level the personality undergoes only slight and rapid alterations. It could be that there is a freeing of lateral, marginal spontaneities only on the occasion of a strong concentration by the subject. I was able to observe a short hallucinatory phenomenon, when I had administered myself an injection of mescaline. It presented precisely this lateral character: someone was singing in a room nearby and as I moved my head to listen – entirely ceasing, as a consequence, to look in front of me – three small parallel clouds appeared before me. This phenomenon disappeared, of course, as soon as I sought to grasp it. It was not compatible with full and clear visual consciousness. It could exist only furtively and for that matter it was given as such; there was, in the way in which these three small mists were delivered to my memory immediately after having disappeared, something at once inconsistent and mysterious, which only, it seems to me, translated the existence of these freed spontaneities on the margins of consciousness.

When we pass to genuine hallucinations (heard voices, apparitions, etc.), the disintegration is much more thoroughgoing. No doubt, the unity of consciousness remains intact as that which renders cock-and-bull stories, contradictions, etc. possible.²⁶ But these new forms of synthetic connection are incompatible with the existence of a personal synthesis and oriented thought. The first condition of hallucination seems to me to be a kind of vacillation of personal consciousness. The patient is alone, the embarrassing thoughts sudden and scattered; a diffuse and degraded connection by participation is substituted for the synthetic connection by concentration; this decline of potential brings about in consciousness a kind of levelling down; at the same time and correlatively perception becomes dark and foggy: object and subject disappear together. It is conceivable that this twilight life, being incompatible with attention or conception of possibilities as such, is prolonged a moment with no other modification. One could also admit the appearance of phenomena of fascination or auto-suggestion. But in the case that concerns us there is only the sudden formation of a partial and absurd psychic system. This system is necessarily partial because it cannot be the object of any concentration of consciousness. There is no longer a centre of consciousness, nor a thematic unity, and it is precisely for this reason that the system appears. It is given in its very structure as anti-thematic, which is to say as something that cannot furnish the theme for a concentration of consciousness. Let me explain: every perception is given as able to be observed; every thought is given as able to be pondered, which is to say held at a distance and considered. These systems, on the other hand, can in no way be observed since they are the correlates of a levelling down of consciousness; they appear only in an unstructured consciousness, precisely because they are the negation of all structure. And so they are always given with a ‘furtive’ character that is constitutive of their being: their essence is to be ungraspable, which is to say to never be posited confronting a personal consciousness. They are the words that one hears but cannot listen to, the faces that one sees but cannot look at. Hence the frequent characteristics that patients themselves give: ‘It was a whispering voice’,‘It spoke to me by telephone’, etc.

The second characteristic of these systems, I have said, is their absurdity. They are presented as cock-and-bull stories, wordplays and puns, brusque insults, etc. It is this very absurdity that gives us the key to their formation. For me, in fact, all existence in consciousness must be expressed in terms of consciousness and I cannot admit a spontaneity, even when the superstructures are reached, that springs from a shadowy zone without being conscious of itself. This way of conceiving spontaneity is only an implicit manner of admitting the existence of the unconscious. It seems to me therefore that these absurd systems are nothing other than the way in which consciousness thinks its present state, which is to say this twilight levelling-down. But it is not a case of a normal thought, positing the object before the subject, it is not a case of a thought about this twilight state. But somewhere in this consciousness that is incapable of concentrating, on the margins, isolated and furtive, appears a partial system that is the thought of this twilight state or, if you wish, that is this twilight state itself. It is a case of an imaging symbolic system that has for its correlate an irreal object – absurd phrase, pun, inopportune appearance.²⁷ It appears and is given as spontaneity but, above all, as impersonal spontaneity. To tell the truth, we are very far from the distinction between subjective and objective. These two worlds have collapsed: we are dealing here with a third type of existence that we lack the words to characterize. The simplest can perhaps be named lateral irreal apparitions, correlates of an impersonal consciousness.

Such is what we may call the pure event of hallucination. But this event does not coincide with the pure experience of hallucination: in fact an experience implies the existence of a thematic consciousness with a personal unity; on the other hand this type of consciousness is denied by the hallucinatory event, which is always produced in the absence of the subject. In a word, the hallucination is presented as a phenomenon the experience of which can be made only by memory. It is a case of immediate memory, which means there would be no hallucination if these partial systems continued to develop in a neutralized consciousness: in that case we would be closer to the dream. The hallucination implies a sudden reaction of consciousness to the partial system with sudden reappearance of the thematic unity. At the unexpected and absurd appearance of the irreal object, a wave of surprise or horror should run through consciousness, an awakening occurs, a regrouping of forces, a little like a sudden noise abruptly awakening a sleeper. Consciousness is up in arms, orients itself, is ready to observe, but of course the irreal object has disappeared, consciousness can find itself confronting only a memory. It remains therefore to describe how the memory appears to us.

First it is necessary to particularly insist on the fact that, if the irreal object is not before consciousness in person, at least there is an immediate memory, which is as strong and concrete as possible, one of those memories that cannot give rise to doubt, that includes the immediate certainty of the existence of their object. But the essential characteristic with which the irreal object is delivered by memory is externality in relation to the current personal consciousness. It is given as having been unforeseeable and not able to be produced at will. It cannot enter into the present synthesis, it can never belong to it. This externality and this independence are evidently very close to those of an object of the real world. At the same time, however, the object retains the characteristics of a spontaneity: it appears as capricious, furtive, and full of mystery. But, one might say, does it not retain its character of irreality? It retains it in such a way that the coefficient of irreality, joined to the unforeseeability and the externality, as I have defined it, only helps to accentuate the contradictory and fantastic character of the hallucination. No less does the patient translate the experience into our language by the words ‘I saw, I heard …’ But in all likelihood the object is not given in memory as irreal: in fact there was no positing of irreality during the event; the production of the irreal object was simply accompanied by nonthetic consciousness of irreality. This nonthetic consciousness does not pass into the memory since, as I have explained, the memory of the perceived object delivers us an irreality in the same way as a reality and, in order that one may be distinguished from the other in recollection, it is necessary that at the moment of their appearance they must have been the objects of explicit positings of reality or irreality.²⁸ It appears to me rather that the hallucinatory object will retain a neutral character in memory. It is the general behaviour of the patient, not the immediate memory, that confers a reality on these appearances. The proof of this is that anyone in a condition of overwork or alcoholic intoxication can have an hallucination but, precisely, the immediate memory delivers it as an hallucination. Only, in the case of the psychosis of influence, a crystallization is effected and the patients organize their lives in accordance with their hallucinations, which is to say they think them over and explain them. It seems however that these spontaneities, wholly unforeseeable and fragmentary as they are, can gradually become charged with a certain ideo-affective material. This requires the patient to act gradually on the hallucinations, as is proved by the appearance of guardians in an advanced stage of chronic hallucinatory psychosis. This action is effected naturally by cementation and participation rather than by direct action. In every case it seems that in a constituted psychosis the hallucination has a functional role: without doubt the patient above all adapts to the visions, but the apparitions and the voices can be penetrated and from this reciprocal accommodation there undoubtedly results a general behaviour of the patient that we can call hallucinatory conduct.

IV. THE DREAM

An analogous problem arises in connection with the dream. Descartes formulates it in his First Meditation:

As if I were not a man who sleeps at night, and regularly has all the same experiences while asleep as madmen do when awake – indeed sometimes even more improbable ones. How often, asleep at night, am I convinced of just such familiar events – that I am here in my dressing gown, sitting by the fire – when in fact I am lying undressed in bed! Yet at the moment my eyes are certainly wide awake when I look at this piece of paper; I shake my head and it is not asleep; as I stretch out and feel my hand I do so deliberately, and I know what I am doing. All this would not happen with such distinctness to someone asleep. Indeed! As if I did not remember other occasions when I have been tricked by exactly similar thoughts while asleep! As I think about this more carefully, I see plainly that there are never any sure signs by means of which being awake can be distinguished from being asleep. The result is that I begin to feel dazed, and this very feeling only reinforces the notion that I may be asleep.²⁹

This problem can be stated thus: if it is true that the dream world is given as a real and perceived world, even though it is constituted by mental imagery, is there not at least one case where the image is given as a perception, which is to say a case where the production of an image is not accompanied by nonthetic consciousness of imaging spontaneity? And if this is so, is my theory of the image not at risk of falling apart entirely? The dream, of course, raises many other questions: for example, that of the symbolic function of its images, and also that of dreaming thought etc. But these questions do not directly concern this work: we shall therefore limit ourselves here to dealing with the problem of the thesis of the dream, which is to say the type of intentional affirmation constituted by the dreaming consciousness.

An initial observation can guide us: there is a sophism in the passage from Descartes that I have cited. As yet we know nothing of the dream, which is difficult to understand, since we can describe it only by using memory while awake. But by contrast I can easily understand a term of comparison established by Descartes: the consciousness that is awake and perceives. At each moment I can make it the object of a reflective consciousness that informs me of its structure with certainty. Now, this reflective consciousness gives me invaluable knowledge (connaissance) at once: it is possible that, in the dream, I imagine that I perceive; but what is certain is that when I am awake I cannot doubt that I perceive. Anyone can try to feign for a moment that they are dreaming, that the book they are reading is a dream book, but will see soon enough, and without being able to doubt it, that this fiction is absurd. And, to tell the truth, its absurdity is not less than is that of the proposition ‘Perhaps I do not exist’, a proposition that, just as for Descartes, is genuinely unthinkable. In fact, the proposition cogito ergo sum results – if it is well taken – from the intuition that consciousness and existence are but one. But this concrete consciousness that is certain of existing exists and is conscious of existing in so far as it has a certain individual and temporal structure. This cogito certainly can be the intuition of the intimate connection of certain essences and it is thus that phenomenology, which is an eidetic science, conceives it. But in order that it can be such, it is first necessary that it is an individual and concrete reflective operation that one can always effect. Now, to think that I exist thinking is to make an eidetic proposition, of which the proposition ‘I exist perceiving’, for example, is a specification. Thus, when I perceive I am not sure that the objects of my perception exist but I am sure that I perceive them. It must be observed however that Descartes did not establish the doubtful character of perception on a direct inspection of perception, as he would have done had he said: When I perceive, I never know very well whether I perceive or dream. On the contrary, he takes it for granted that the perceiver is conscious of perceiving. He simply observes that the dreamer has an analogous certainty on their part. No doubt, there is the familiar formula ‘I pinch myself to know if I am not dreaming’, but this is only a case of a metaphor that corresponds to nothing concrete in the minds of those who use it.

Now, to this evidence of perception we can oppose first the frequent cases where the dreamers, suddenly passing onto the reflective plane, themselves note that they are in the course of a dream. Soon we shall even see that every appearance of the reflective consciousness in the dream corresponds to a momentary awakening, although the weight of the consciousness that dreams is often such that it annihilates the reflective consciousness at once, as in nightmares where the dreamer desperately thinks ‘I am dreaming’ without thereby waking up, because the reflective consciousness disappears at once and the dreamer is ‘recaptured’ by the dream.³⁰ These few examples suffice to show us that the dreamer’s positing of existence cannot be assimilated to that of the person who is awake, since in the one case the reflective consciousness destroys the dream by the very fact that it posits it for what it is, whereas in the case of perception it confirms and reinforces the reflected consciousness. But if one thinks carefully about this, one notices in addition that the non-thetic consciousnesses of the dream and of the wakeful state must in some way differ in their manner of positing objects. In fact reflective consciousness draws its certainty from the sole fact that it develops and posits as object what is an implicit and nonthetic structure of the reflected consciousness. My reflective certainty of dreaming therefore comes from the fact that my primitive and unreflective consciousness must contain in itself a kind of latent and non-positional knowledge that reflection then makes explicit. Besides, if this were not so, it would then be necessary that the dreamer concludes the judgement ‘I am dreaming’ from reasonings and comparisons that show the absurdity of the images. But such a hypothesis is strikingly unlikely: for dreamers to reason and make comparisons requires them to be in full possession of their discursive faculties, and therefore already awake. It would therefore be absurd to say that at the precise moment when the dreamer is awake enough to formulate judgements of likelihood, the dreamer says precisely: I am dreaming. The dreamer could say nothing other than: I have been dreaming. This case occurs frequently, but it is entirely different from the one that we are dealing with. The dream always appears to us, therefore, with a character of fragility that cannot belong to perception: it is at the mercy of a reflective consciousness. Only, what produces it and what saves it is that this reflective consciousness does not appear most of the time. We must explain why. But first it is advisable to note here that the first and unreflective consciousness, if it is – at the same time as positing an object – nonthetic consciousness of itself, cannot be so under the form ‘I am dreaming’, first because this judgement requires a thesis, and next because this total definition of a consciousness could be given only by reflection. To make this more comprehensible, let us use an example that will soon serve us. If I say ‘I believe that Pierre is my friend’, this judgement is a reflective judgement. It at once brings with it a setting of doubt about the object of belief. I can say to myself at once ‘it is true, I believe it, but I do not know it, I have never been given a proof’, etc. Being thus sceptical, I could even conclude that Pierre has no friendship for me. And certainly, if Pierre’s friendship for me appears to me as the object of my belief, it is because my non-reflective consciousness of this friendship was nonthetic consciousness of itself as simple belief; but it is not necessary to conclude that the scepticism of the reflection was also a non-positional structure of the unreflective consciousness. When I am conscious of the friendship that Pierre has for me, I am conscious of it as an object of belief, and if I believe it this is because I do not doubt it. Thus, precisely because I believe in Pierre’s friendship, my nonthetic consciousness of belief does not carry the slightest doubt about this friendship. It is wholly belief. It is therefore blind confidence since to believe is to have confidence. Simply, in so far as it is consciousness of belief it is not consciousness of knowledge. But this restriction can appear only to the look of reflection. So we can see that the nonthetic consciousness of dreaming carries in it none of the restrictive and negative characteristics that we find in the judgement ‘I am dreaming’ (‘I am dreaming’, therefore I am not perceiving). A nonthetic consciousness can negate nothing since it is wholly full (remplie) of itself and only of itself.

We have now arrived at the certainty that the thesis of the dream cannot be that of perception, even if it appears to resemble it at first sight. Besides, this can be drawn from the simple inspection of a reflective consciousness directed on a perceptual consciousness. To affirm ‘I perceive’ is to deny that I am dreaming, or if you like, it is a necessary and sufficient motivation for me to affirm that I am not dreaming. But if the dream affirmed that it was a perception in the same way and with the same certainty as the perception, the judgement ‘I am perceiving’ would be only probable and we would have to support it once again by comparing the perceived objects with one another, by the cohesion of seen scenes, by their likelihood, etc. I have shown elsewhere that these comparisons are never given to consciousness as really effected operations and that they anyway would not permit us to distinguish perception from the image.³¹ It can similarly be shown that they would not permit us to distinguish wakefulness from dreams. In reality, perception, like Spinoza’s truth, is index sui and can never be otherwise. And the dream also closely resembles error in Spinozism: error can be given as truth, but to possess the truth is sufficient for the error to dissipate itself.

However this will not be enough. If we deepen our study of the dream and perception a little, we see that the difference that separates them is, from one point of view, assimilable to that which separates belief from knowledge. When I perceive a table, I do not believe in the existence of that table. I have no need of belief, since the table is there in person. There is no supplementary act by which, in addition to perceiving that table, I confer a believed or believable existence on it. In the very act of perception, the table is discovered, disclosed, given to me. And the thesis of the perceiving consciousness should not be confused with an affirmation. Affirmation arises from voluntary spontaneity, whereas the thesis represents a nuance peculiar to intentionality. It is what corresponds, on the side of the noesis, to the noematic presence of the object in person. The evidence peculiar to perception is therefore in no way a subjective impression that would be assimilable to a specification of belief: evidence is the presence for consciousness of the object in person; it is the ‘fulfilment’ (Erfüllung) of the intention. Similarly, for a reflecting consciousness directed at a perceptual consciousness, the perceptual nature of the consciousness reflected on is no more an object of belief, it is an immediate and evident given. This is inescapable. An evidence is a presence. Where evidence is given, belief is neither useful nor even possible. The dream, on the other hand, is a belief. All that passes in a dream, I believe. But I do no more than believe it. That is to say, the objects are not present in person to my intuition.

However, we have only shifted the problem. It will indeed be asked: how can you believe in the reality of the images of a dream, since you constitute them as images? Their intentional character as images should exclude all possibility of believing them to be realities.

The fact is that I said that the dream was a phenomenon of belief, but not a belief in images as realities. To know exactly what is involved here we must return to hypnagogic imagery. This imagery that is founded on the imaging apprehension of phosphenes, on muscular contractions, on inner speech, is sufficiently rich to furnish the matter of the dream. And Leroy has noted, like many other authors, that the passage from hypnagogism to the dream is often graspable. They are the same images, he says, simply our attitude in connection with them is modified. This is confirmed by numerous observations: all people who have hypnagogic images can say that they are frequently surprised to have been dreaming without the content of the hypnagogic imagery having been modified. Simply, on waking with a start, they are conscious of having dreamed. Naturally the representative analogon is enriched, in the course of the night, with coenaesthetic sensations and, finally, with all the sensations strong enough to cross the threshold of consciousness and too weak to provoke awakening. They are all grasped, in fact, not for what they are but as an analogon for other realities. It is thus that Proust on awakening suddenly noticed that he had uttered in his dream the words ‘stag, stag, Francis Jammes, fork’, but these words constituted a coherent phrase and were suited to the dreamed situation. In other words, they stood for other words that were not really uttered. Similarly the red colouring of the sunlight passing through a curtain is apprehended, in a famous dream, as standing for blood. One very frequent error consisted in believing that the dream is composed of mental images. This is not exactly right: how could it be admitted that the red light provoked the mental image of blood? It would then have to be that it remained unconscious, which is absurd – or that it was experienced as red light, which requires wakefulness. Actually, it is the red light that is grasped as blood. It is the way we have of apprehending it. Certain dreams cited by Janet show well how one same noise that is prolonged can be successively grasped by consciousness as standing for a mass of diverse objects but never for itself: in the dream, consciousness cannot perceive, because it cannot leave the imaging attitude in which it has enclosed itself. Everything is image to it, but precisely because of this it cannot prepare mental images which, although exclusive of perception, can be born only if a constant passage from perception to imagination were possible and, one could say, only on the ever-present ground of perception. The dream is a consciousness that cannot leave the imaging attitude. However, a modification is evidently produced at the departure from hypnagogic imagery since we can grasp by means of reflection the passage from hypnagogism to dream. Must we admit that this modification is a change of thesis? In other words, does the dream appear when we mistake hypnagogic images for perceptions? This is what I declare de facto impossible. If consciousness affirmed them as realities, it would be constituted in relation to them as perceiving consciousness and the immediate result would be to make them vanish. It is precisely this modification that often brings about awakening: the noise of the alarm clock is grasped at first as an analogon for the noise of a fountain, the ringing of bells, the rolling of drums, etc. But if we wake up, we pass precisely to the perception of the noise of the alarm. This does not mean that we make judgements of the type ‘it is the ringing of an alarm’, it means only that we suddenly apprehend the ringing for what it is (that is to say a volley of vibrant sounds) and not for something other than itself. It matters little whether or not we later understand the origin and the cause of the sound: I can be awakened by a creaking noise of whose genuine cause I am always ignorant. I may even perhaps not grasp it as a creaking noise when I wake up: this denomination perhaps requires a complicated play of operations of identification and recognition. Simply, for me to pass from the dreaming attitude to that of wakefulness, it is enough that I apprehend it as something existent. It even matters little if I am deceived: a creaking of furniture could be grasped, at night in my dream, as a sound of steps; thereupon I can wake up and interpret the creaking as a sound of steps above my head. There is, however, an abyss between these two assimilations. In the dream, the creaking is the sound of steps as imaged; in the perception, it is grasped as reality and as itself (though wrongly), as the sound of steps. Alain says that to perceive is to dream and wake up immediately. But this is a grave error: a false perception is not a dream, to correct a perception is not to wake up. I say on the contrary that the dream world can be explained only if we admit that the consciousness that dreams is essentially deprived of the faculty of perception. It does not perceive, nor does it seek to perceive, nor can it even conceive what a perception is. However we must not believe that this consciousness, isolated from the real world, enclosed in the imaginary, will let itself take the imaginary for the real, since it lacks the power to compare it with a reality that would play the role of a reducer. This is not my idea at all, first because an image is given for what it is, without it being necessary to go into a comparison with perception, next because what characterizes the consciousness that dreams is that it has lost the very notion of reality. It therefore cannot confer this quality on any one of its noemata. But what we want to show is that the dream is a perfect realization of a closed consciousness. That is to say an imaginary that one absolutely cannot leave and on which it is impossible to take any external point of view.

If we consult our consciousness at the moment when, after the sudden descent from hypnagogism into the dream, a noise has just awakened us, we will see that what brings about the judgement ‘I was dreaming’ is grasping the ‘interesting’ character of the hypnagogic images. This characteristic did not exist at all in the pure hypnagogism. By ‘interesting’, we must not understand ‘connected to me’, as Leroy seems to believe. The presence of me in the dream is frequent and almost necessary when it is a case of ‘deep’ dreams, but one can cite numerous dreams occurring immediately after falling asleep in which the me of the sleeper plays no role at all. Here is one, for example, communicated to me by Mlle B …: a book engraving appeared at first, which represented a slave kneeling before his mistress, then the slave went to seek the pus that would cure him of the leprosy that his mistress had given him; it had to be the pus of a woman who loved him. During the entire dream, the dreamer had the impression of reading about the adventures of the slave. At each moment, she played no part in the events. It also frequently happens that dreams – mine, for example – are given at first as a story that I am reading or being told. And then, all of a sudden, I am identified with one of the people of the story, which becomes my story. The neutralized thesis that characterizes Mlle B …’s dream or the beginning of my dream is noticeable. Could one correctly believe that the thesis is modified and becomes a positing of existence because I suddenly become one of the people of the dream? But let us leave for a moment the role of the Me in the dream and, since there are dreams without the Me, let us see what distinguishes them from hypnagogic images. We already know that it is neither their relation with the dreaming person, nor by means of a sudden positing of the images as reality. But it is enough to consider Mlle B …’s dream and to compare it with pre-oneiric images to see the difference clearly: a hypnagogic image is isolated, cut off from other images; if, by chance, two or three images are related by interdependence, the whole, in every case, remains isolated: there is no hypnagogic world; pre-oneiric visions have no past, no future, there is nothing behind them or alongside them. At the same time, I posit each of them as an image. This characteristic of the image remains in Mlle B …’s dream: she reads the story, which is a manner of neutralizing the thesis. Only, each image appears as a moment of a temporal unfurling that possesses a past and a future. The slave is not seen for himself, as in pre-oneiric imagery in which he would simply appear as ‘a slave’. But in the dream, he is presented to the dreamer as sick-slave-going-to-seek-the-pus-that-will-cure-him. At the same time as his image refers to a before and an after, it appears on the ground of a very rich spatial world: while the slave seeks his remedy, I do not lose sight of the fact that he has a mistress who gave him the leprosy, nor that this mistress continues to exist somewhere, etc. Besides, the hypnagogic image is never given as being somewhere. We ‘see’ a star as imaged and it is a few inches from us but we do not know at all where this image is an image, it is not surrounded by an imaginary universe. On the contrary, the person of the dream is always somewhere, even if that place is figured schematically as in Elizabethan theatre. And this ‘somewhere’ is itself situated in relation to a whole world that is not seen but is all around it. So the hypnagogic image is an isolated appearance ‘up in the air’, one could say, while the dream is a world. To tell the truth, there are as many worlds as there are dreams, often even as many as there are phases of a dream. It would be more precise to say that every dream image appears with its own world. This is sometimes enough to differentiate a sole oneiric image from a pre-oneiric image. If the Aga Khan’s face appears to me and I simply think that it is the Aga Khan’s face as imaged, this is a hypnagogic vision. If I already sense behind this face a world laden with threats and promises, I am alerted at once, it is a dream. But this does not yet give a complete account of the ‘interesting’ character of the dream. Due to the fact that the dream makes us suddenly enter into a temporal world, every dream is given to us as a story. (In the case of the appearance of the Aga Khan’s face, it was a story gathered in a single vision and which had no time to unfurl.) Of course, the spatio-temporal universe in which the story unfurls is purely imaginary, it is not the object of any positing of existence. To tell the truth, it is not even imaged, in the sense in which consciousness imagines when it presentifies something through an analogon. It is, as imaginary world, the correlate of a belief, the dreamer believes that the scene unfurls in a world; that is to say, the world is the object of empty intentions that are directed on it starting from the central image.

Nevertheless these few remarks by no means contradict that great law of imagination: there is no imaginary world. In fact, it is solely a case of a phenomenon of belief. We do not scrutinize this world as imaged, do not presentify details to ourselves, do not even consider doing so. In this sense, the images remain isolated from one another, separated by their essential poverty, subjected to the phenomenon of quasi-observation, ‘in the void’; they do not sustain between them any relations other than those that consciousness can at each moment conceive in constituting them. But it remains nonetheless that each image is given as surrounded by an undifferentiated mass that is posited as an imaginary world. It would perhaps be better to say that each imaginary object, in the dream, carries with it a special quality constitutive of its nature, which is ‘the atmosphere of a world’. We have seen above that imaginary space and time are given as internal qualities of the imaged thing. It is necessary to make here an analogous observation: the ‘worldliness’ of the dreamed image does not consist in an infinity of relations that it sustains with other images. It is simply a case of an immanent property of the oneiric image; there are as many ‘worlds’ as images, even if the sleeper, passing from one image to another, ‘dreams’ that they remain in the same world. It would therefore be advisable to say: in the dream, each image is surrounded by a worldly atmosphere. But for greater convenience I will use the expression ‘dream world’, since it is in current use, and simply warn not to take it unreservedly.

One can now see, therefore, the noetic modification of consciousness when it falls from the pre-oneiric state into the dream: the hypnagogic image was the abrupt persuasion into which consciousness suddenly fell; I was suddenly persuaded that such an entoptic spot was a fish as imaged. Now I am dreaming and this abrupt belief is enlarged and enriched: I am suddenly persuaded that this fish has a story, that it was caught in such a river, that it will appear on the table of the archbishop, etc. River, fish, archbishop are all equally imaginary, but they constitute a world. My consciousness is therefore consciousness of a world, I have projected all my knowledge, all my preoccupations, all my memories, and even that necessity of being-in-the-world that is imposed on being human, I have projected all this, but in the imaginary mode, on the image that I presently constitute. What has happened is that consciousness was entirely taken, has entirely entered into the game and has determined itself to produce syntheses in all their richness, but only in the imaginary mode. This is possible only in the dream: even schizophrenics, whose condition is very similar to that of the dreamer, retain the possibility of grasping themselves as ‘playing a game’. But here attention no longer exists, nor the power to present its object as transcendent: consciousness is fascinated by a swarm of impressions, it grasps them as being this or that object as imaged, as standing for this or that, and then, suddenly, it is entirely in the game, it apprehends these shimmering impressions as standing for an object that is at the extreme point of a world whose contours are lost in the fog. So long as the dream endures, consciousness cannot determine itself to reflect, it is carried along by its own decline and it continues indefinitely to grasp images. This is the genuine explanation of oneiric symbolism: if consciousness can never grasp its own worries, its own desires except in the form of symbols, this is not, as Freud believed, because of a repression that obliges it to disguise them: it is because it is incapable of grasping what is real in the form of reality. It has entirely lost the function of the real and everything that it feels, everything that it thinks, it cannot feel or think otherwise than in the imaged form. This is also why, as Halbwachs has shown, one cannot remember in the dream. It is not here a question of social structures. Simply, the least real memory would bring about the sudden crystallization before consciousness of the whole of reality, since it would be situated, finally, in relation to this real bedroom, to this real bed on which I lie. The image of crystallization can serve us doubly: one sole pre-oneiric image can provoke the crystallization of the noemata of consciousness into noemata of imaginary worlds, one sole reality grasped or perceived as reality can crystallize the real world facing consciousness; it is entirely one or entirely the other.

Here it is necessary to characterize the degree of belief of consciousness in the imaginary worlds, or if you prefer the ‘weight’ of these worlds. Let us return to Mlle B …’s dream. The sole fact that the dream is given as a story should permit us to understand the kind of belief that we can attribute to it. But the dreamer instructs us still better, she tells us that she believed she was reading this story. What does she mean, if not that the story is presented to her with the same type of interest and credibility as that of a read story? Reading is a kind of fascination, and when I read a detective story I believe in what I read. But this does not signify in the least that I cease to hold the detective’s adventures to be imaginary. Simply, an entire world appears to me as imaged through the lines of the book (I have already shown that the words serve as an analogon) and this world encloses my consciousness, I cannot disengage, I am fascinated by it.³² This is the kind of fascination without positing existence that I call belief. Consciousness is not only conscious of itself as enchained, but is also conscious that there is nothing it can do against itself. This world is sufficient unto itself, it can be neither dissipated nor corrected by a perception, since it is not a domain of the real. It is its very irreality that puts it beyond reach and that confers a compact opacity and a strength upon it. So long as consciousness persists in this attitude, it can neither be given nor even conceive any motivation to change, the passage to perception can be made only by revolution. This is, with even greater force, the power of the dreamed world: grasped noematically on the object, this power is the correlate of the nonthetic consciousness of fascination. This is why the dream world, as with that of reading, is given as entirely magical; we are haunted by the adventures of the dreamed people as by those of the heroes of novels. It is not that the nonthetic consciousness of imagining ceases to grasp itself as spontaneity, but that it grasps itself as spellbound. This is what gives the dream its nuance of fate. The events are given as unable not to happen, in correlation with a consciousness that cannot prevent itself from imagining them. The dream image, however, continues to possess strictly only the characteristics that consciousness confers upon it: the phenomenon of quasi-observation is valid here as elsewhere. Only, at the same time, it possesses an obsessive character that comes from the fact that consciousness has determined itself by its own fascination to form it, a ‘shady’ character that comes from its magical nature, and a fatalistic character whose origin it would be well for us to explain better.

In the imaginary world, there is no dream of possibilities since possibilities require a real world, starting from which they are thought as possibilities. Consciousness cannot take a step back from its own imaginations in order to imagine a possible sequence to the story that it is representing: that would be to wake up. This is what we do when, for example, having awakened, we imagine a comforting ending to the nightmare we just had. In a word, consciousness cannot foresee, since here that would be second order imagining, and therefore possess reflective knowledge (connaissance) of the first order imagination. All foresight, starting from a given moment of the story, becomes an episode of the story, by the very fact that it appears. I cannot hold back, conceive another ending, I have no respite, no recourse, I am obliged to tell myself the story: there are no ‘trial runs’. Thus each moment of the story is given as having an imaginary future, but a future that I cannot foresee, which will come by itself, in its time, to haunt consciousness, against which consciousness will be crushed. So, contrary to what one might believe, the imaginary world is given as a world without freedom: no more is it determined, it is the inverse of freedom, it is fatal. Thus it is not by conceiving other possibilities that the dreamer is reassured, saved from embarrassment. It is by the immediate production of reassuring events in the story itself. The dreamer does not say ‘I could have had a revolver’, but all at once has a revolver in hand. But too bad if at that very moment there occurs a thought that in the waking state would be expressed in the form ‘and what if the revolver is jammed!’ This ‘if’ cannot exist in the dream: this saving revolver, at the very moment when it is needed, is suddenly jammed.

But the dream world is not so closed that the dreamer does not come to play a role in it. Hence the majority of dreams are given as adventures of the dreamer. ‘I dreamed that I was … etc.’ is generally the phrase by which we begin to narrate our dreams. How should we understand this appearance of the dreamer in the imaginary world? Must we think that it is truly the dreamer, in person, as a real consciousness, that is introduced in the midst of the oneiric imagery? To tell the truth, this hypothesis seems to me deprived of sense. For in order that the dreamer be introduced as a real consciousness into the imaginary drama that is played out in the dream, it is necessary that dreamers can be conscious of themselves as real beings, which is to say existing in the real world, in real time, and marked by real memories. But these conditions are precisely those that define the waking state. Suddenly introduce a real person into the dream and the dream completely falls apart, reality reappears. Besides, exactly what does this mean? Certainly, my consciousness, when awake, is characterized by its ‘being-in-the-world’, but precisely because this ‘being-in-the-world’ characterizes the relation between consciousness and reality, it cannot be applied to the consciousness that dreams. A consciousness cannot ‘be-in’ an imaginary world, unless it is itself an imaginary consciousness. But what is an imaginary consciousness if not a certain object for a real consciousness? To tell the truth, a consciousness that dreams is always nonthetic consciousness of itself as being fascinated by the dream, but it has lost its being-in-the-world and recovers it only on awakening.³³

In truth, in order to solve the problem it will be enough to recall certain dreams that are first constituted by impersonal scenes and in which the sleeping person suddenly appears. Everyone has dreamed of witnessing the adventures of an imaginary person (for example, of that slave dreamed of by Mlle B …), and then suddenly noticed that they are the slave. To tell the truth, the term ‘noticed’ is improper, since we are of course dealing, throughout the whole course of the dream, with phenomena of quasi-observation: but rather, following various motivations, the sleeper is suddenly taken with the belief that the slave or the person fleeing the tiger is themselves, exactly as, in hypnagogism the subject was suddenly taken with the belief that this bright spot was a man’s face. Let us examine this transformation more closely: the slave, in becoming myself, does not lose his constitutive character of irreality. On the contrary, it is me who, projected onto the slave, becomes an imaginary me. In most cases, I continue to see the slave who flees, as [at the beginning of the dream. But now there is] a unique nuance that pervades him entirely, a constitutive manner of being that one could call, in diverting from its original sense a neologism of Claparède’s, Meness (Moiïté).³⁴ The constitutive character of this slave is that he is me. But he is irreally me, he is me as imaginary. We could, to better understand what happens here, use again the comparison with reading. Everyone knows that, when I read, I identify more or less with the heroes of the novel. The case is especially frequent when the novel is written in the first person and authors are able to make use of this identification to render their story more pressing, more urgent for their readers. Nevertheless, the identification is never complete, first because authors more often use ‘aesthetic distance’, write their book ‘in the past’ for example, etc., which permits the reader to survey their characters from a distance. Moreover, the possibility of a reflective consciousness is always present. There results a state that is worth describing for itself, and in which I irreally am the hero, while remaining different from them; I am myself and another. But let us suppose for a moment that these barriers are broken: I am taken with the belief that what is threatened by all the dangers in the novel is irreally but absolutely myself. At that moment, the interest that I take in the novel changes in nature: it is me who is threatened, who is pursued, etc. I witness an adventure that irreally happens to me. Up to then, the dangers the hero faced fascinated me and provoked in me an immense interest but the basis of my feeling was still – despite my partial identification with him – sympathy. Now the feeling provoked is a feeling of belonging; in the imaginary world, into which one can enter only if one is irreal, an irreal me represents me, suffers, is in danger, even risks an irreal death that will put an end at once to himself and to the world that surrounds him. An irreal game is played, in which my irreal me is at stake. Now this trance state that cannot be entirely realized in reading (and that anyway interferes with the aesthetic appreciation of the book) is precisely what is realized in the personal dream. Once an irreal me is trapped in the fascinating world of the dream, the imaginary world is closed at once; it is no longer an imaginary spectacle which, at the same time as I contemplate it, remains before me: now I am represented, I am ‘in danger’, I have my place in it and it encloses me. He is not only irreally represented, he also irreally lives, acts, suffers. At the same time his relation to my consciousness is modified since up to then it was a relation of a uniquely representative type (as could also be had by emotional impressions caused by this world). From the moment when an imaginary me is ‘inside’, everything changes: this me holds to my consciousness by a relation of emanation. I do not only see the slave who flees, but I feel myself to be that slave. And I do not feel myself to be him in the intimacy of my consciousness, as I can in the wakeful state feel myself to be the same as yesterday, etc. No, I feel myself to be him, outside, in him; it is an irreal affective quality (like the despair of René, the wickedness of Ménardier, the goodness of Jean Valjean) that I grasp on him. He is therefore, in a sense, transcendent and external since I still see him running and, in another sense, transcendent without distance since I am irreally present in him. But this modification that the slave undergoes is also undergone by the imaginary world since it is for him (who is me) a world suffered, hated, feared, etc. It remains therefore, in a sense, a purely represented world and, in another sense, a world immediately lived. It has gained a kind of subdued presence without distance in relation to my consciousness. I am taken. Of course, I do not modify the thesis because of this, I am taken as I am in a game. But there are games in which one is strongly taken and, on the other hand, I cannot break the enchantment, I can make an imaginary adventure cease only by producing another imaginary adventure, I am obliged to live the fascination of the irreal to the dregs. We have here the perfect and closed illustration of a consciousness for which the category of the real does not exist at all.

It must not be believed that in a personal dream the sleeper always begins by being identified with a person who has existed before in an impersonal dream. A dream can be personal from the start. It is simply necessary that the imagery of the dreamer produces an unspecified object that the dreamer can believe, whether immediately or after some time, is themselves, whatever else that object may be. This is in fact the only way that the sleeper can enter into this world that does not exist: the sleeper must be identified with one of the objects of that world; in other words, the sleeper needs a material substrate for the impression of being-in-the-irreal-world. As we have noted, sleepers themselves cannot be found there but can be taken by the belief that such imaginary objects, which already possess their being-in-the-irreal-world, are themselves; and they can produce these objects and the belief that they are these objects at the same time. From this results that curious characteristic of the dream where everything is seen from a superior point of view, which is that of the sleeper representing a world, and at the same time from a relative and limited point of view, which is that of the imaginary-me plunged into the world. Actually, the imaginary-me does not see this world and sleepers do not put themselves in the place of that particular being in order to see things from its point of view: sleepers always see things from their own point of view, from the point of view of the creator. Only, in the very moment when they see things, they see things oriented in relation to this object-me that lives them and suffers them. The enraged dog who is about to bite approaches not the sleeper but the object-me and the sleeper grasps its distance from the object-me as an irreversible absolute, exactly as when awake I grasp the distance of the dog-about-to-bite-me from myself as absolutely oriented from the dog to me. This space is full of vectors of tensions, lines of force, is what Lewin called a hodological space. Only, instead of surrounding me, it surrounds and urges a certain object that I imagine among others and that is the object-me. The result is that a dream could in no way be represented in the world of perception. Here for example, is a dream that I had last year. I was pursued by a forger. I took refuge in an armour-plated room, but he began, on the other side of the wall, to melt the armour-plating with a blowtorch. Now, I saw myself, on the one hand, transfixed in the room and waiting – while believing myself to be safe – and on the other hand, I saw the forger on the other side of the wall in the process of cutting. I therefore knew what was going to happen to the object-me, who was still ignorant, and yet the thickness of the wall that separated the forger from the object-me was an absolute distance, oriented from forger to object-me. And then, all of a sudden, at the moment when the forger was about to finish his work, the object-me knew that the forger was going to pierce the wall, which is to say I suddenly imagined him as knowing it, without concerning myself with justifying this new knowledge (connaissance), and the object-me escaped just in time through a window.

These few remarks allow us to better understand the distinction that everyone is obliged to make between imaginary feelings and real feelings experienced in dreams. There are dreams in which the object-me is terrified and yet we do not call them nightmares because the sleeper is very peaceful. In such cases, the sleepers have therefore limited themselves to endowing the object-me with feelings that they must have felt for the very plausibility of the situation. These are imaginary feelings that do not ‘take hold of’ the dreamer any more than do those usually called ‘abstract emotions’. This is because the dream does not always motivate real emotions in the sleeper, any more than a novel always succeeds in moving us, even if it recounts horrible events. I can witness impassively the adventures of the object-me. And yet they always happen to this irreal me. Inversely, the content of the nightmare is not always terrifying. This is because the real affectivity of the sleeper, for reasons that we do not have to survey here, sometimes precedes the dream and the dream ‘enacts’ it in some way on the terrain of the imaginary. Terrible adventures sometimes follow, but sometimes also nothing serious happens; simply, what happens is intentionally grasped as sinister because the sleeper who produces these images really is stricken. It is then the atmosphere of the dreamed world that is nightmarish.

We can now similarly explain that apparent anomaly that I signalled earlier in a note: it frequently happens to me in dreams that I am walking in New York and taking great pleasure in it. The awakening is not always what we are in the habit of calling a ‘disappointment’, but rather that kind of disenchantment that we experience after leaving the theatre. It has also happened that I have said to myself in the dream: this time, I am not dreaming. It seems that here I carried out a reflective act and that this reflective act had been deceptive, which would question the very value of reflection. But in reality this reflective act was not really effected: it was an imaginary reflective act, effected by the me-object and not by my own consciousness. This me that is walking between the high walls of New York, it is he who suddenly says to himself: I am not dreaming; it is in him that the certitude of being awake appears, exactly as heroes of novels can rub their eyes and suddenly say: ‘Am I dreaming? No, I am not dreaming.’ The consciousness that is dreaming is determined once and for all to produce only the imaginary, and its worries, its concerns, as we have seen, are projected before it in symbolic and irreal form. The worried hope that one is not dreaming, that one is not running to the disenchantment that follows the end of the representation, could not express itself really without the sleeper waking up, just as the spectator could not think ‘I wish that life were like this play’ without being detached from the representation to be placed on the terrain of reality (real wishes, real personality, etc.). Here this desire not to be dreaming, which is only a desire, becomes conscious of itself outside, in the transcendence of the imaginary, and it is in this imaginary transcendence that it will find satisfaction. Thus I imagine that the me-object desires to be in New York for good and I imagine it with my own desire to be there, and because of this the me-object finds itself – in accordance with the very terms of fiction – in New York in flesh and blood and not in a dream. There is therefore nothing of real reflection here and we are very far from the wakeful state. It is the same, of course, for all the reflections that can be produced by the object-me, such as ‘I am afraid’,‘I am humiliated’, etc. – reflections that are, moreover, themselves very rare.

On the other hand, the only means that disposes the sleeper to come out of a dream is the reflective observation: I am dreaming. And in order to make this observation, nothing is needed except to produce a reflective consciousness. Only, this reflective consciousness is almost impossible to produce since the types of motivations that ordinarily solicit it are precisely those that the ‘enchanted’ consciousness of the sleeper is no longer allowed to conceive. On this subject nothing is more curious than the desperate efforts sleepers make in certain nightmares to remind themselves that a reflective consciousness is possible. Such efforts are in vain most of the time, because sleepers are constrained, by the very ‘enchantment’ of consciousness, to produce these memories in the form of fiction. They debate but everything slides into fiction, everything is transformed despite them into the imaginary. Finally, the dream can be interrupted only by two motivations. The first is the irruption of a reality that imposes itself, for example the real fear that provoked the nightmare ‘takes hold’ of the nightmare itself and ends up becoming so strong that it breaks the enchantment of consciousness and motivates a reflection. I become conscious that I am afraid and at the same time that I am dreaming. Or some external stimulus is imposed, whether this is because it comes as a surprise and cannot be grasped at once as an analogon, because its violence determines a real emotional shock that is suddenly made the object of a reflection, or because of the persistence of certain orders through sleep.³⁵ The second motivation that can bring about the cessation of the dream is always found in the dream itself: it can be, in fact, that the dreamed story ends with an event that is itself given as something final, which is to say as something for which a succeeding event is inconceivable. For example, I often dream that I am about to be guillotined and the dream stops at the very moment when my neck is placed on the block. Here it is not fear that motivates the awakening – for, paradoxical as this might appear, this dream is not always presented as a nightmare – but rather the impossibility of imagining an after. Consciousness hesitates, this hesitation motivates a reflection, and this is the awakening.

We can conclude that the dream is not given – contrary to what Descartes believed – as the apprehension of reality. On the contrary, it would lose all its sense, all its own nature, if it could be posited as real for a moment. It is above all a story and we take the kind of passionate interest in it that the naive reader takes when reading a novel. It is lived as fiction and it is only in considering it as fiction that is given as such that we can understand the kind of reactions that it provokes in the sleeper. Only, it is a ‘spellbinding’ fiction: consciousness – as I have shown in the section on the hypnagogic image – is tied up. And what it lives, at the same time as the fiction is apprehended as fiction, is the impossibility of leaving the fiction. Just as King Midas transformed everything he touched into gold, consciousness itself is determined to transform everything that it grasps into the imaginary: hence the fatal character of the dream. It is the grasp of this fatality that has often been confused for an apprehension of the dreamed world as reality. In fact what makes the nature of the dream is that reality entirely escapes the consciousness that tries to recapture it; all the efforts of consciousness are turned despite it to producing the imaginary. The dream is not fiction taken for reality, it is the odyssey of a consciousness dedicated by itself and in spite of itself to building only an irreal world. The dream is a privileged experience that can help us to conceive what a consciousness would be like that had lost its ‘being-in-the-world’ and had, at the same time, been deprived of the category of the real.

Conclusion

I. CONSCIOUSNESS AND IMAGINATION

We can now pose the metaphysical question that has been gradually disclosed by these studies of phenomenological psychology. It can be formulated thus: what are the characteristics that can be attributed to consciousness on the basis of the fact that it is consciousness capable of imagining? This question can be taken in the sense of a critical analysis in the form: what must consciousness in general be if it is true that the constitution of an image is always possible? And, without doubt, it is in this form that our minds, accustomed to posing philosophical questions in the Kantian perspective, will best understand it. But, to tell the truth, the deepest sense of the problem can be grasped only from a phenomenological point of view.

After the phenomenological reduction, we find ourselves in the presence of the transcendental consciousness that is disclosed to our reflective descriptions. We can thus fix by concepts the result of our eidetic intuition of the essence ‘consciousness’. Now, phenomenological descriptions can discover, for example, that the very structure of transcendental consciousness implies that this consciousness is constitutive of a world. But it is evident that they will not teach us that it must be constitutive of one such world, which is to say precisely the one where we are, with its earth, its animals, its people, and the history of its people. We are here in the presence of a primary and irreducible fact that is given as a contingent and irrational specification of the noematic essence of world. And many phenomenologists will call ‘metaphysics’ the research that aims at disclosing this contingent existent in its entirety. This is not exactly what I would call metaphysics, but this is of little importance here. What will concern us is this: is the function of imagining a contingent and metaphysical specification of the essence ‘consciousness’ or should it rather be described as a constitutive structure of this essence? in other words: can we conceive of a consciousness that would never imagine and that would be entirely absorbed in its intuitions of the real – in which case, the possibility of imagining, which appears as one quality among others of our consciousnesses, would be a contingent enrichment – or rather, as soon as we posit a consciousness, must it be posited as always able to imagine? We should be able to settle this question by the simple reflective inspection of the essence ‘consciousness’ and it is thus that I would try to settle it, were I not addressing a public still little accustomed to phenomenological methods. But as the idea of an eidetic intuition is still repugnant to many French readers I will use an oblique method, which is to say a somewhat more complex method. We will start from the question: what must consciousness be in order that it can imagine? We will try to develop this by means of the ordinary procedures of critical analysis, which is to say by a regressive method. Next we will compare the results obtained from this with those that are given to us by the Cartesian intuition of consciousness realized by the cogito, and we will see whether the necessary conditions for realizing an imagining consciousness are the same as or different from the conditions of possibility of a consciousness in general.

To tell the truth, the problem thus posed can appear entirely new and even irrelevant to French psychologists. And, in fact, as long as we are the victims of the illusion of immanence, there is no general problem of imagination. Images are in fact provided, in these theories, with a type of existence rigorously identical to that of things. They are reborn sensations that can differ in degree, in cohesion, in signification from primitive sensation, but which belong like them to intra-worldly existence. The image is as real as any other existent. The only problem that is posed for its subject is the problem of its relation to other existents, but whatever this relation may be it leaves the very existence of the image intact. Similarly, whether the portrait of King Charles VI is or is not a good likeness, whether the king is dead or alive or even if he never existed, the portrait remains an existent thing in the world. There is therefore no existential problem of the image.

But if, on the contrary, we envisage the image as we have tried to in this work, the existential problem of the image can no longer be pushed aside. In fact, to the existence of an object for consciousness there corresponds noetically a thesis or positing of existence. Now, the thesis of the imaging consciousness is radically different from the thesis of a realizing consciousness. This means that the type of existence of the imaged object in so far as it is imaged differs in nature from the type of existence of the object grasped as real. And, certainly, if I now form the image of Pierre, my imaging consciousness encloses a certain positing of Pierre’s existence, such as that he is, at this very moment, in Berlin or in London. But in so far as he appears to me as imaged, this Pierre who is present in London, appears to me as absent. This fundamental absence, this essential nothingness of the imaged object, suffices to differentiate it from the objects of perception. What therefore must a consciousness be in order that it can successively posit real objects and imaged objects?

We must at once make an essential observation, that readers may have already made if they have studied with me the problem of the relation of perception to the image (see Part II, § V). For an object or any element of an object there is a great difference between being aimed at emptily and being given-as-absent. In any perception, many empty intentions are directed, starting from the elements of the object presently given, towards the other sides and other elements of the object that are not yet or no longer revealed to our intuition. For example, the arabesques of a tapestry that I am gazing at are only partly given to my intuition. The legs of the armchair in front of the window hide certain curves, certain designs. I nevertheless grasp these hidden arabesques as presently existing, as veiled and not at all as absent. And I grasp them not for themselves in trying to presentify them by means of an analogon but in the very manner in which I grasp what has been given to me as their continuation. I perceive their hidden beginnings and endings (which appear to me before and behind the legs of the armchair), as being continued behind the legs of the armchair. It is therefore in the manner in which I grasp what is given that I posit as real what is not given. Real in the same sense as that which is given, as that which confers on it its signification and its very nature. Similarly, the successive notes of a melody are grasped by appropriate retentions as that which make the note presently heard precisely what it is. In this sense, to perceive this or that real datum is to perceive it on the ground of reality as a whole. This reality is not the object of any special act of my attention but it is co-present as the essential condition of the existence of the reality currently perceived. We can see that the imaging act is the inverse of the realizing act. If I want to imagine the hidden arabesques, I direct my attention towards them and I isolate them, just as I isolate on the ground of an undifferentiated universe the thing that I presently perceive. I cease to grasp them emptily as constituting the sense of the perceived reality, I give myself them in themselves. But precisely as I cease to aim at them starting from what is present to grasp them in themselves, I grasp them as absent, they appear to me as given emptily. Certainly they really exist over there under the armchair and it is over there that I aim at them but as I aim at them there where they are not given to me, I grasp them as a nothingness for me. Thus the imaginative act is at once constituting, isolating, and annihilating.

This is what makes the problem of memory and the problem of anticipation two problems radically different from the problem of imagination. Certainly, the memory, from many points of view, seems very close to the image, and I was sometimes able to draw my examples from memory to better understand the nature of the image. There is nevertheless an essential difference between the thesis of the memory and that of the image. If I recall an event of my past life, I do not imagine it, I remember it. That is to say, I do not posit it as given-absent, but as given-now as passed. Pierre’s handshake when leaving me yesterday evening did not undergo a modification of irreality while flowing into the past: it simply went into retirement; it is always real but past. It exists past, which is one mode of real existence among others. And when I want to apprehend it anew, I aim at it where it is, I direct my consciousness towards this past object that is yesterday and, at the heart of that object, I regain the event that I am seeking, Pierre’s handshake. In a word, just as when I want to really see the arabesques hidden beneath the armchair, I must look for them where they are, which is to say move the armchair, so when I recall this or that memory, I do not evoke it but I take myself to where it is, I direct my consciousness towards the past where it awaits me as a real event in retirement. On the other hand if I represent Pierre as he might be at this moment in Berlin – or simply Pierre as he exists at this moment (and not as he was yesterday on leaving me), I grasp an object that is not given to me at all or that is precisely given to me as being out of reach. There I grasp nothing, which is to say I posit nothing. In this sense, the imaging consciousness of Pierre in Berlin (what is he doing at the moment? I imagine that he is walking on the Kurfürstendamm etc.) is much closer to that of the centaur (whose complete nonexistence I affirm) than to the memory of Pierre as he was the day he left. What is common between Pierre as imaged and the centaur as imaged is that they are two aspects of Nothingness. And it is also this that distinguishes the lived future from the imagined future. There are in fact two sorts of futures: one is but the temporal ground on which my present perception develops, the other is posited for itself but as that which is not yet. When I play tennis I see my opponent hit the ball with the racket and I leap to the net. There is therefore anticipation here, since I foresee the trajectory of the ball. But this anticipation does not posit for itself the passage of the ball to this or that point. Actually, the future is here only the real development of a form begun by my opponent’s movement and this opponent’s real movement communicates its reality to the whole form. If one prefers, the real form with its zones of real-past and real-future is entirely realized through my opponent’s movement. As for my foresight, it is also reality, I continue to realize the form in foreseeing it, since my foresight is a real movement internal to the form. Thus, step by step, there is always a real future that occurs simply, like the real past, as the sense of a current form in development or, if one prefers, as the signification of the universe. And, in this sense, it makes no difference whether we present the real unperceived aspects of objects as a present reality and aimed at emptily, or as a real future. The arabesques hidden by the armchair are the real complement of my bodily movement by which I move the armchair, as well as the present and latent existence concealed by the armchair. All real existence is given with present, past and future structures, therefore the past and the future as essential structures of the real are equally real, which is to say correlates of a realizing thesis. But if, on the other hand, lying on my bed, I foresee what could happen when my friend Pierre returns from Berlin, I detach the future from the present that constitutes its sense. I posit it for itself and I give it to myself. But, precisely, I give it to myself as not yet, which is to say as absent or if one prefers as a nothingness. Thus, I can live a future in reality as grounded in the present (when for example I go to look for Pierre at the station and all my acts presuppose as their real sense the arrival of Pierre at 7.35 p.m.), or on the other hand I can isolate this same future and posit it for itself but by cutting it off from all reality and annihilating it, by presentifying it as nothingness.

We can now grasp the essential condition for a consciousness to be able to image: it must have the possibility of positing a thesis of irreality. But we must make this condition more precise. It is not a question of consciousness ceasing to be consciousness of something. It is in the very nature of consciousness to be intentional and a consciousness that ceased to be consciousness of something would thereby cease to exist. But consciousness must be able to form and posit objects affected by a certain character of nothingness in relation to the totality of reality. One can recall, in fact, that the imaginary object can be posited as nonexistent or as absent or as existing elsewhere or not be posited as existent. We notice that the common characteristic of these four theses is that they include the entire category of negation, though in different degrees. Thus the negative act is constitutive of the image. We have already noted in fact that the thesis is not added to the image, but that it is its most inner structure. But in relation to what is the negation effected? To answer this, it is enough to consider for a moment what is produced when we consider the portrait of Charles VIII as an image of Charles VIII. I at once cease to consider the picture as making up part of the real world. It can no longer be that the object perceived in the picture is susceptible to being altered by changes in its surrounding environment. The picture itself, as a real thing, can be more or less illuminated, its colours can flake off, it can burn. This is because it possesses – for want of the ‘being-in-the-world’ that is reserved for consciousness – a ‘being-in-the-midst-of-the-world’. Its objective nature depends on reality grasped as a spatio-temporal whole. But if, on the other hand, I grasp Charles VIII as imaged in the picture, the object apprehended can no longer be subjected, for example, to modifications of lighting. It is not true, for example, that I can light the cheek of Charles VIII more or less.

The illumination of that cheek, in fact, has been ruled in the irreal once and for all by the painter. It is the irreal sun – or the irreal candle that is positioned by the painter at this or that distance from the face being painted – that determines the degree of illumination of the cheek. All that a real projector can do is to light the part of the real picture that corresponds to the cheek of Charles VIII. Similarly, if the picture burns, it is not Charles VIII as imaged that burns but simply the material object that serves as an analogon for the manifestation of the imaged object. Thus the irreal object appears at once as out of reach in relation to reality. We therefore see that in order to produce the object ‘Charles VIII’ as imaged, consciousness must be able to deny the reality of the picture, and that it could deny this reality only by standing back from reality grasped in its totality. To posit an image is to constitute an object in the margin of the totality of the real, it is therefore to hold the real at a distance, to be freed from it, in a word, to deny it. Or, if one prefers, to deny that an object belongs to the real is to deny the real in positing the object; the two negations are complementary and the latter is the condition of the former. We know, besides, that the totality of the real, in so far as it is grasped by consciousness as a synthetic situation for that consciousness, is the world. There is therefore a double condition for consciousness to be able to imagine: it must be able to posit the world in its synthetic totality and, at the same time, it must be able to posit the imagined object as out of reach in relation to that synthetic whole, which is to say posit the world as a nothingness in relation to the image. It clearly follows from this that all creation of the imaginary would be totally impossible to a consciousness whose nature was precisely to be ‘in-the-midst-of-the-world’. If we assume a consciousness placed at the heart of the world as an existent among others, we must conceive it, by hypothesis, as subjected to the action of diverse realities without recourse – without its being able to surpass the detail of these realities by an intuition that embraces their totality. This consciousness could therefore contain only real modifications provoked by real actions and all imagination would be prohibited to it, precisely to the extent to which it was bogged down in the real. This conception of a consciousness stuck in the world is not unknown (inconnue) to us since it is precisely that of psychological determinism. We can affirm without fear that, if consciousness is a succession of determined psychical facts, it is totally impossible for it ever to produce anything other than the real. For consciousness to be able to imagine, it must be able to escape from the world by its very nature, it must be able to stand back from the world by its own efforts. In a word, it must be free. Thus the thesis of irreality has delivered us the possibility of negation as its condition. Now, the latter is possible only by the ‘nihilation’ of the world as totality and this nihilation is revealed to us as being the inverse of the very freedom of consciousness. But here several remarks are called for: first of all we must bear in mind that the act of positing the world as a synthetic totality and the act of ‘standing back’ from the world are one and the same act. If we can use a comparison, it is precisely in putting themselves at a convenient distance from their paintings that impressionist painters bring out the whole ‘forest’ or ‘white water lilies’ from the multitude of little strokes they have placed on the canvas. But, reciprocally, the possibility of constituting a whole is given as the primary structure of the act of standing back. So to posit reality as a synthetic whole is enough to posit oneself as free from it and this surpassing is freedom itself since it could not be effected were consciousness not free. So to posit the world as world and to ‘nihilate’ it are one and the same thing. In this sense Heidegger can say that nothingness is the constitutive structure of the existent. In order to be able to imagine, it is enough that consciousness can surpass the real and constitute it as a world, since the nihilation of the real is always implied by its constitution as a world. But this surpassing cannot be effected in just any way and the freedom of consciousness should not be confused with arbitrariness. For an image is not purely and simply the world denied, but is always the world denied from a certain point of view, precisely that which allows the positing of the absence or the nonexistence of the object presentified ‘as imaged’. The arbitrary positing of the real as a world will not of itself make the centaur appear as an irreal object. For the centaur to arise as irreal, the world must be grasped precisely as world-where-the-centaur-is-not, and this can be produced only if different motivations lead consciousness to grasp the world as being exactly such that the centaur has no place in it. Likewise, for my friend Pierre to be given to me as absent, I must have been led to grasp the world as a whole such that Pierre cannot currently be present in it for me. (He could be currently present for others – in Berlin, for example.) What motivates the appearance of the irreal is not necessarily, nor even most often, the representative intuition of the world from this or that point of view. There are in fact, for consciousness, many other ways to surpass the real in order to make a world of it: the surpassing can and should be made at first by affectivity or by action. For example, the appearance of a dead friend as irreal occurs on the ground of affective apprehension of the real as an empty world from this point of view.

I will call the different immediate modes of apprehension of the real as a world ‘situations’. We can then say that the essential condition for a consciousness to imagine is that it be ‘situated in the world’ or more briefly that it ‘be-in-the-world’. It is the situation-in-the-world, grasped as a concrete and individual reality of consciousness, that is the motivation for the constitution of any irreal object whatever and the nature of that irreal object is circumscribed by this motivation. Thus the situation of consciousness must appear not as a pure and abstract condition of possibility for all of the imaginary, but as the concrete and precise motivation for the appearance of a certain particular imaginary.

From this point of view, we can finally grasp the connection of the irreal to the real. First of all, even if no image is produced at the moment, every apprehension of the real as a world tends of its own accord to end up with the production of irreal objects since it is always, in a sense, free nihilation of the world and this always from a particular point of view. So, if consciousness is free, the noematic correlate of its freedom should be the world that carries in itself its possibility of negation, at each moment and from each point of view, by means of an image, even while the image must as yet be constituted by a particular intention of consciousness. But, reciprocally, an image, being a negation of the world from a particular point of view, can appear only on the ground of the world and in connection with that ground. Of course, the appearance of the image requires that the particular perceptions be diluted in the syncretic wholeness world and that this whole withdraws. But it is precisely the withdrawal of the whole that constitutes it as ground, that ground on which the irreal form must stand out. So although, by means of the production of the irreal, consciousness can momentarily appear delivered from its ‘being-in-the-world’, on the contrary this ‘being-in-the-world’ is the necessary condition of imagination.

Thus the critical analysis of the conditions of possibility for all imagination has led us to the following discoveries: in order to imagine, consciousness must be free from all particular reality and this freedom must be able to be defined by a ‘being-in-the-world’ that is at once constitution and nihilation of the world; the concrete situation of consciousness in the world must at each moment serve as the singular motivation for the constitution of the irreal. Thus the irreal – which is always double nothingness: nothingness of itself in relation to the world, nothingness of the world in relation to it – must always be constituted on the ground of the world that it denies, it being well understood, moreover, that the world is not delivered only to a representative intuition and that this synthetic ground simply demands to be lived as situation. If these are the conditions for imagination to be possible, do they correspond to a specification, a contingent enrichment of the essence ‘consciousness’ or are they nothing other than the very essence of this consciousness considered from a particular point of view? It seems that the answer is in the question. What is the free consciousness, in fact, whose nature is to be consciousness of something, but which, for this very reason, constitutes itself in the face of the real and surpasses it at each moment because it cannot be other than ‘being-in-the-world’, which is to say by living its relation with the real as situation, what is it, in fact, if not simply consciousness as it is revealed to itself in the cogito?

Is not the very first condition of the cogito doubt, which is to say the constitution of the real as a world at the same time as its nihilation from this same point of view, and does not the reflective grasp of doubt as doubt coincide with the apodictic intuition of freedom?

We may therefore conclude that imagination is not an empirical power added to consciousness, but is the whole of consciousness as it realizes its freedom; every concrete and real situation of consciousness in the world is pregnant with the imaginary in so far as it is always presented as a surpassing of the real. It does not follow that all perception of the real must be reversed in imagination, but as consciousness is always ‘in situation’ because it is always free, there is always and at every moment the concrete possibility for it to produce the irreal. There are various motivations that decide at each instant if consciousness will be only realizing or if it will imagine. The irreal is produced outside the world by a consciousness that remains in the world and it is because we are transcendentally free that we can imagine.

But, in its turn, the imagination that has become a psychological and empirical function is the necessary condition of the freedom of empirical humans in the midst of the world. For, if the nihilating function belonging to consciousness– which Heidegger calls surpassing – is that which renders the act of imagination possible, it must be added that, reciprocally, this function can be manifested only in an imaging act. There cannot be an intuition of nothingness, precisely because nothingness is nothing and because all consciousness – intuitive or not – is consciousness of something. Nothingness can be given only as an infrastructure of something. The experience of nothingness is not, strictly speaking, an indirect experience, but is an experience that is, on principle, given ‘with’ and ‘in’. Bergson’s analyses remain valid here: an attempt to conceive death or the nothingness of existence directly is by nature doomed to fail.

The sliding of the world into the heart of nothingness and the emergence of the human-reality in this very nothingness can occur only through the positing of something that is nothingness in relation to the world and in relation to which the world is nothingness. This is to define, evidently, the constitution of the imaginary. It is the appearance of the imaginary before consciousness that allows us to grasp that the nihilation of the world is its essential condition and its primary structure. If it were possible to conceive for a moment a consciousness that does not imagine, it would be necessary to conceive it as totally bogged down in the existent and without the possibility of grasping anything other than the existent. But it is precisely this that is not and never could be: every existent, as soon as it is posited, is consequently surpassed. But still it must be surpassed towards something. The imaginary is in every case the concrete ‘something’ towards which the existent is surpassed. When the imaginary is not posited as a fact, the surpassing and the nihilation of the existent are stuck in the existent, the surpassing and the freedom are there but they are not revealed; the person is squashed in the world, transfixed by the real, and is closest to the thing. However, as soon as this person apprehends in one way or another (most of the time without representation) the whole as a situation, that person surpasses it towards that in relation to which the person is a lack, an emptiness, etc. In a word, the concrete motivation of the imaging consciousness itself presupposes the imaging structure of consciousness; the realizing consciousness always includes a surpassing towards a particular imaging consciousness that is like the inverse of the situation and in relation to which the situation is defined. For example, if I desire to see my friend Pierre, who is not here at present, the situation is defined as a ‘being-in-the-world’ such that Pierre is not at present given and Pierre is that in relation to which the totality of the real is surpassed in order to make a world. But this is not at all the real Pierre who, on the contrary, if he were given as present or as aimed at starting from the real by empty but presentifying intentions (for example, if I heard his steps outside the door), would be a part of the situation: this Pierre in relation to whom the situation is defined is precisely Pierre absent.

Thus the imaginary represents at each moment the implicit sense of the real. The imaging act properly so called consists in positing the imaginary for itself, which is to say in making that sense explicit – as when Pierre as imaged abruptly arises before me – but this specific positing of the imaginary is accompanied by a collapse of the world which is then no more than the nihilated ground of the irreal. And if negation is the unconditioned principle of all imagination, reciprocally it can only ever be realized in and by an act of imagination. One must imagine what one denies. In fact, the object of a negation cannot be a reality since this would then affirm what is being denied – but neither can it be a total nothing since, precisely, one denies something. Thus the object of a negation must be posited as imaginary. And this is true for the logical forms of negation (doubt, restriction, etc.), as for its affective and active forms (prohibition, consciousness of impotence, lack, etc.).

We are now at the point of understanding the sense and the value of the imaginary. The imaginary appears ‘on the ground of the world’, but reciprocally all apprehension of the real as world implies a hidden surpassing towards the imaginary. All imaging consciousness maintains the world as the nihilated ground of the imaginary and reciprocally all consciousness of the world calls and motivates an imaging consciousness as grasping the particular sense of the situation. The apprehension of nothingness cannot occur by an immediate disclosure, it is realized in and by the free succession of consciousnesses, the nothingness is the matter of surpassing the world towards the imaginary. It is as such that it is lived, without ever being posited for itself. There could be no realizing consciousness without imaging consciousness, and vice versa. Thus imagination, far from appearing as an accidental characteristic of consciousness, is disclosed as an essential and transcendental condition of consciousness. It is as absurd to conceive of a consciousness that does not imagine as it is to conceive of a consciousness that cannot effect the cogito.

II. THE WORK OF ART

I do not want to tackle here the problem of the work of art as a whole. Although it is strictly dependent on the question of the Imaginary, its treatment would require a work specifically on it. But it seems that it is time to draw some conclusions from the long studies where we took for our example a statue, a portrait of Charles VIII or a novel. The following remarks essentially concern the existential type of the work of art. And we can at once formulate the principle: the work of art is an irreality.

This already appeared clearly to us when we considered as an example, with an entirely different purpose, the portrait of Charles VIII. We understood at the very outset that this Charles VIII was an object. But this is not, understood aright, the same object as the painting, the canvas, the real layers of paint. So long as we consider the canvas and the frame for themselves, the aesthetic object ‘Charles VIII’ does not appear. It is not that it is hidden by the painting, but that it cannot be given to a realizing consciousness. It appears the moment that consciousness, effecting a radical conversion that requires the nihilation of the world, constitutes itself as imaging. This is like the situation with those cubes that can be seen as five or six in number. It would not be appropriate to say that when one sees five, one conceals the aspect of the drawing in which six appear. But, rather, one cannot see five and six at the same time. The intentional act that apprehends them as being five is sufficient in itself, it is complete and exclusive of the act that grasps them as six. So it is with the apprehension of Charles VIII as imaged that is depicted by the painting. This depicted Charles VIII is necessarily the correlate of the intentional act of an imaging consciousness. And as this Charles VIII, who is an irreality in so far as he is grasped on the canvas, is precisely the object of our aesthetic appreciations (it is he that we say ‘moves us’, ‘is painted with intelligence, with power, with grace’, etc.), we are led to recognize that in a picture the aesthetic object is an irreality. This is of considerable importance if we bear in mind the confusion ordinarily made between the real and the imaginary in the work of art. It is often heard said, in fact, that an artist first has an idea as imaged and then realizes it on the canvas. The error made here is the idea that the artist can, in fact, start from a mental image that is, as such, incommunicable and at the end of the work deliver to the public an object that anyone can contemplate. It is then thought that there was a passage from the imaginary to the real. But this is in no way true. What is real, we must not tire of affirming, are the results of the brush strokes, the impasting of the canvas, its grain, the varnish spread over the colours. But, precisely, all this is not the object of aesthetic appreciation. What is ‘beautiful’, on the contrary, is a being that cannot be given to perception and that, in its very nature, is isolated from the universe. We have just shown that it cannot be illuminated, by projecting a light beam on the canvas for example: it is the canvas that is illuminated and not the object of aesthetic appreciation. In fact the painter did not realize a mental image at all, but simply constituted a material analogon such that anyone can grasp that image if only they gaze at the analogon. But the image thus provided with an external analogon remains an image. There is no realization of the imaginary, nor should one talk of its objectification. Each stroke of the brush was given not for itself nor even in terms of the construction of a coherent real whole (in the sense that one can say that a certain lever in a machine was conceived in terms of the whole and not in terms of itself). It was given in connection with an irreal synthetic whole and the aim of the artist was to construct a whole of real tones that would enable this irreality to be manifested. So the painting should be conceived as a material thing visited from time to time (every time that the spectator takes the imaging attitude) by an irreality that is precisely the painted object. What deceives us here is the real and sensual pleasure given by certain real colours on the canvas. Certain of Matisse’s reds, for example, provoke a sensual enjoyment in those that see them. But we must understand that this sensual enjoyment, if considered in isolation – for example, if it is provoked by a red actually given in nature – has nothing of the aesthetic. It is purely and simply a pleasure of the senses. But when, on the other hand, one grasps the red on the painting, one grasps it, despite everything, as making up part of an irreal whole, and it is in this whole that it is beautiful. For example, it is the red of a rug near a table. Besides, there is never pure colour. Even if the artist is concerned solely with the sensible relations between forms and colours, that artist will choose a rug precisely in order to increase the sensory value of the red: tactile elements, for example, must be intended through that red, it is a woollen red, because the rug is of woollen material. Without this ‘woollen’ characteristic of the colour, something would be lost. And certainly the rug is painted for the red that it justifies, and not the red for the rug. But if Matisse had chosen a rug rather than a dry and glossy sheet of paper, this is because of the voluptuous mixture that is constituted by the colour, the density, and the tactile qualities of the wool. Consequently, one can genuinely enjoy the red only in grasping it as red of the rug, and therefore as irreal. And what is strongest in the contrast with the green of the wall would be lost if that green were not precisely so stiff and shiny because it is the green of a wall covering. It is therefore in the irreal that the relations of colours and forms take on their true sense. And even when the objects depicted have their usual sense reduced to a minimum, as in cubist paintings, at least the painting is not flat. The forms that we grasp are certainly not the forms of a rug, a table or anything else that we ordinarily grasp in the world. Nevertheless, they have a density, a matter, a depth, they bear relations of perspective to one another. They are things. And precisely to the extent that they are things, they are irrealities. One is accustomed, since cubism, to claiming that the painting need not represent or imitate the real, but should constitute an object in itself. This doctrine, as an aesthetic programme, is perfectly defensible and we owe a number of masterpieces to it. Still, it needs to be understood. If it means that the painting, although altogether devoid of signification, is nevertheless a real object, it commits a grave error. Certainly, it no longer represents nature. The real object no longer functions as an analogon for a bouquet of flowers or a clearing. But when I ‘contemplate’ it, I am not, for all that, in the realizing attitude. The painting still functions as an analogon. It is simply that what is manifested through it is an irreal ensemble of new things, of objects that I have never seen nor will ever see but that are nonetheless irreal objects, objects that do not exist in the painting, nor anywhere in the world, but that are manifested through the canvas and that have seized it by a kind of possession. And it is the ensemble of these irreal objects that I describe as beautiful. As for the aesthetic enjoyment, it is real but is not grasped for itself, as produced by a real colour: it is nothing but a manner of apprehending the irreal object and, far from being directed on the real painting, it serves to constitute the imaginary object through the real canvas. This is the source of the famous disinterestedness of aesthetic vision. This is why Kant could say that it does not matter whether or not the beautiful object, grasped as beautiful, is provided with existence; this is why Schopenhauer could speak of a kind of suspension of the Will to Power. This does not come from some mysterious way, that we are sometimes able to use, of apprehending the real. It is simply that the aesthetic object is constituted and apprehended by an imaging consciousness that posits it as irreal.

What we have just shown regarding painting can also be easily shown with regard to the arts of fiction, poetry and drama. It goes without saying that the novelist, the poet, the dramatist constitute irreal objects through verbal analogons; it also goes without saying that the actor who plays Hamlet makes himself, his whole body, serve as an analogon for that imaginary person. This even settles the famous discussion of the paradox of the actor. We know, in fact, that certain authors insist that actors do not believe in their characters. Others, on the contrary, emphasizing numerous testimonies, show us actors taken with the play, victims in some way of the heroes they represent. It appears to me that these two theses are not mutually exclusive: if one understands by ‘belief’ the realizing thesis, it is evident that the actor does not posit that he is Hamlet. But this does not signify that he is not entirely ‘mobilized’ to produce Hamlet. He uses all his feelings, all his strength, all his gestures as analogons of the feelings and conduct of Hamlet. But by this very fact he irrealizes them. He lives entirely in an irreal world. And it matters little that he really cries in playing the role. These tears, whose origin I have explained above (see Part 4, § II), he grasps them himself – and the public with him – as the tears of Hamlet, which is to say as an analogons of irreal tears. The transformation that is made here is similar to that which I have discussed in the dream: the actor is entirely gripped, inspired by the irreal. It is not that the character is realized in the actor, but that the actor is irrealized in the character.¹

But are there not arts whose objects seem to escape irreality by their very nature? A melody, for example, refers to nothing but itself. Is a cathedral not simply that real mass of stone that dominates the surrounding rooftops? But let us look more closely. I listen, for example, to a symphonic orchestra interpreting Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony. Let us leave aside deviant cases, which are anyway on the margins of aesthetic contemplation, as when I go ‘to hear Toscanini’ interpret Beethoven in his own way. As a general rule what draws me to the concert is the desire ‘to hear the Seventh Symphony’. Of course I may have some objection to hearing an amateur orchestra, I may have preferences for some conductor or other. But this is due to my naive desire to hear the Seventh Symphony ‘performed perfectly’, because the symphony will then be perfectly itself. The errors of a poor orchestra that play ‘too fast’,‘too slow’,‘in the wrong tempo’, etc., appear to me to conceal, to ‘betray’ the work they are interpreting. At best, the orchestra lets itself be eclipsed by the work it interprets and, if I have reason to be confident in the performers and their conductor, I will grasp myself as confronted by the Seventh Symphony itself, in person. Everyone will agree with me on that. But, now, what is the Seventh Symphony ‘in person’? It is evidently a thing, which is to say something that is before me, that resists, that endures. Of course, there is no further need to prove that this thing is a synthetic whole, that does not exist note by note but through large thematic ensembles. But is this ‘thing’ real or irreal? Let us first consider that I am listening to the Seventh Symphony. For me, this ‘Seventh Symphony’ does not exist in time, I do not grasp it as a dated event, as an artistic manifestation that unfurls in the Châtelet auditorium on 17 November 1938. If tomorrow or a week later I hear Furtwängler conduct another orchestra interpreting this symphony, I am once more in the presence of the same symphony. It is simply being played better or worse. Let us now examine how I listen to this symphony: some people shut their eyes. In that case they ignore the visual and dated event that is this interpretation; they abandon themselves only to pure sounds. Others stare at the orchestra or at the conductor’s back. But they do not see what they are looking at. This is what Revault d’Allonnes calls reflection with auxiliary fascination. In fact the auditorium, the conductor, and even the orchestra have all vanished. I am therefore confronted by the Seventh Symphony but on the express condition that I hear it nowhere, that I cease to think of the event as current and dated, and on the condition that I interpret the succession of themes as an absolute succession and not as a real succession that is unfurling while Pierre is, simultaneously, visiting one of his friends. To the extent that I grasp it, the symphony is not there, between those walls, at the tip of the violin bows. Nor is it ‘past’ as if I thought: this is the work that took shape on such a date in the mind of Beethoven. It is entirely outside the real. It has its own time, which is to say it possesses an internal time, which flows from the first note of the allegro to the last note of the finale, but this time does not follow another time that it continues and that happened ‘before’ the beginning of the allegro, nor is it followed by a time that would come ‘after’ the finale. The Seventh Symphony is in no way in time. It therefore entirely escapes the real. It is given in person, but as absent, as being out of reach. It would be impossible for me to act on it, to change a single note of it, or to slow its movement. Yet it depends, in its appearance, on the real: that the conductor does not faint, that a fire breaking out in the hall does not put a sudden stop to the performance. Nor can we conclude that we would, in such a case, grasp the Seventh Symphony as interrupted. No, we would only think that the performance of the symphony stopped. Does one not clearly see that the performance of the Seventh Symphony is its analogon? It can be manifested only through analogons that are dated and that unfurl in our time. But in order to grasp it on these analogons, it is necessary to operate the imaging reduction, which is to say, apprehend precisely the real sounds as analogons. It is therefore given as a perpetual elsewhere, a perpetual absence. We must not picture it (as does Spandrell in Huxley’s Point Counter Point – as do so many Platonists) such that it exists in another world, in an intelligible heaven. It is not simply outside time and space – as are essences, for example: it is outside the real, outside existence. I do not really hear it, I listen to it in the imaginary. This is what explains the considerable difficulty that we always experience in passing from the‘world’ of the theatre or of music to that of our everyday concerns. To tell the truth, there is no passage from one world to the other, there is a passage from the imaging attitude to the realizing attitude. Aesthetic contemplation is an induced dream and the passage to the real is an authentic awakening. We often speak of the ‘disappointment’ that accompanies the return to reality. But this does not explain why this discomfort exists, for example, after witnessing a realistic and cruel play; in that case, in fact, reality should be grasped as reassuring. In fact the discomfort is simply that of the sleeper on awakening: a fascinated consciousness, stuck in the imaginary is suddenly freed by the abrupt ending of the play, of the symphony, and suddenly regains contact with existence. Nothing more is needed to provoke the nauseous disgust that characterizes the realizing consciousness.

From these few remarks, one can already conclude that the real is never beautiful. Beauty is a value that can only ever be applied to the imaginary and that carries the nihilation of the world in its essential structure. This is why it is stupid to confuse the moral and the aesthetic. The values of the Good presume being-in-the-world, they aim at conduct in the real and are subject from the outset to the essential absurdity of existence. To say that one ‘takes’ an aesthetic attitude to life is to confuse the real and the imaginary. It happens, however, that we can take the attitude of aesthetic contemplation in the face of real objects or events. In that case, everyone can observe in themselves a kind of standing back from the object contemplated, which itself slides into nothingness. Starting from this moment, the object is no longer perceived; it functions as an analogon of itself, which is to say that an irreal image of what it is becomes manifested for us through its current presence. This image could be purely and simply the object ‘itself’ neutralized, nihilated, as when I contemplate a beautiful woman or the death at a bullfight; it could also be the imperfect and muddled appearance of what it could be through what it is, as when the painter grasps the harmony of two more intense, more lively colours through the real spots encountered on a wall. In the same way, the object, given as behind itself, becomes untouchable, it is beyond our reach, and hence there arises a kind of painful disinterest in relation to it. It is in this sense that one can say: the extreme beauty of a woman kills the desire for her. In fact we cannot simultaneously place ourselves on the aesthetic plane with this irreal ‘herself’ that we admire and on the realizing plane of physical possession. In order to desire her it is necessary to forget that she is beautiful, since desire is a plunge into the heart of existence, into what is most contingent and most absurd. Aesthetic contemplation of real objects has the same structure as paramnesia, in which the real object functions as an analogon for itself in the past. But in one case there is nihilation and in the other there is pastification (passéification). Paramnesia differs from the aesthetic attitude as memory differs from imagination.

NOTES

HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION

1 The subject had interested him since he was a student: he had chosen for the title of his diplôme d’études supérieures, in 1927, ‘The Image in Psychological Life’.

2 Armand Cuvillier, Manuel de Philosophie, volume 1 (Paris: Librairie A. Colin, 1935).

3 A critical inventory of the theories of the image since Descartes. See also the more global critique of the objects of traditional psychology in the introduction of Sketch for a Theory of the Emotions, translated by Philip Mairet (London: Methuen, 1962).

4 Circumstances decided otherwise. See War Diaries: Notebooks from a Phoney War November 1939 – March 1940, translated by Quintin Hoare (London: Verso, 1984).

5 See Georges Dumas (ed), Nouveau Traité de Psychologie (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1932).

6 He was undoubtedly wary of his tendency to abstract constructions for which his friends reproached him. See Simone de Beauvoir, The Prime of Life, translated by Peter Green (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1965).

7 Translated by F. Kersten as Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy: First Book: General Introduction to a Pure Phenomenology (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1982).

8 War Diaries. Many Husserlians reproached Sartre for ‘having ideas at Husserl’s expense’, and even for deforming the philosopher’s thought. In The Imagination, Sartre dedicates a few pages to sketching what he had grasped of this philosophy, and what he intended to borrow.

9 My italics.

10 Binet worked with J. M. Charcot, who is known for his influence on the young Freud.

11 Of the same generation as Freud, Pierre Janet, who suspected the role of sexuality in the aetiology of neurosis, was at the time the rival of the father of psychoanalysis. See, for example, L’Automatisme Psychologique (Paris: Evreux, 1889) and De l’Angoisse à l’Extase (Paris: Alcan, 1926).

12 Paris: Alcan, 1934.

13 See War Diaries.

14 Sketch for a Theory of the Emotions, introduction.

15 See War Diaries.

PHILOSOPHICAL INTRODUCTION

1 Nelson Goodman, Languages of Art, second edition (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1969).

2 Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida, translated by Richard Howard (New York: Hill and Wang 1981), § 28.

3 Kendall Walton’s Mimesis as Make-Believe (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press 1990) is a landmark discussion of aesthetics and imagination.

4 Qu’est-ce que la littérature? (Paris: Gallimard 1948). Translated by Bernard Frechtman as What is Literature? (London: Methuen 1950). See especially the opening pages of Chapter 3.

5 For a good discussion of the nature of mental imagery, and its relation to depiction, see Robert Hopkins, Picture, Image and Experience: A Philosophical Enquiry (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1998).

6 For the view that perception and hallucination involve the same kind of experience, see John Searle, Intentionality: An Essay in the Philosophy of Mind (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press 1983), Chapter 2. For the opposing view, see John McDowell, Mind and World (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press 1994).

7 Les Séquestrés d’Altona (Paris: Gallimard 1960). Translated by Sylvia and George Leeson as Loser Wins (London: Hamish Hamilton 1960); reprinted as The Condemned of Altona (New York: Knopf 1961), and as Altona in Altona and Other Plays (Harmondsworth: Penguin 1962).

8 L’Être et le Néant: Essai d’Ontologie Phénoménologique (Paris: Gallimard 1943). Translated by Hazel E. Barnes as Being and Nothingness: An Essay on Phenomenological Ontology (London: Methuen 1958). See Part I, Chapter 2, § II: ‘Patterns of Bad Faith’.

NOTES ON THE TRANSLATION

1 ‘An Interview with Jean-Paul Sartre’, interview by Michael Rybalka, Orestes F. Pucciani, and Susan Gruenheck (Paris, 12 and 19 May 1975), translated by Susan Gruenheck, in The Philosophy of Jean-Paul Sartre, edited by Paul Arthur Schilpp (La Salle: Open Court, The Library of Living Philosophers 1981), 1–51, p. 11.

2 See the opening paragraphs of Introduction § III and of Part II, Chapter 1 § I of Being and Nothingness (L’Être et le Néant). See also George Berkeley, Philosophical Works, edited by M. R. Ayers, second edition (London: J. M. Dent and Sons 1975).

PART I
THE CERTAIN

1 See my critical study L’Imagination (Paris: Alcan 1936). Translated by Forrest Williams as: Imagination: A Psychological Critique (London: Cressett Press, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press and Toronto: Ambassador Books 1962).

2 David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, second edition, edited by L. A. Selby-Bigge and P. H. Nidditch, (Oxford: Clarendon 1978), p. 1.

3 David Hume, Treatise, p. 20.

4 F. Moutier, L’aphasie de Broca, (Paris: Steinheil 1908). Compare p. 244: ‘I categorically reject the existence of images’.

5 One may be tempted to oppose me citing cases where I experience the image of an object that does not have a real existence outside of me. But, precisely, the chimera does not exist ‘in image’. It exists neither thus nor otherwise.

6 The existence of such concepts has sometimes been denied. However, perception and imagery presuppose a concrete knowledge without image and without words.

7 This is what Jaensch understood extremely well when, pushing the theory of revived perceptions to the end, he made of the eidetic image an object that can be observed and learned.

8 What can mislead us here:

(a) The use that one makes of the image in mathematical thought. Many believe that we perceive from within the image new relations between figures.

(b) Cases where the image comprises a kind of emotional teaching. We will consider these different cases later.

9 There are, on the borders of wakefulness and sleep, certain rather strange cases that could pass for images displaying resistance. For example, I may see an unspecified object turning clockwise and not be able to stop it nor make it turn in the opposite direction. We will say some words about these phenomena when we study the hypnagogic images to which they belong.

10 This suspension of belief remains a positional act.

11 Baruch de Spinoza, Ethics, edited and translated by G. H. R. Parkinson (Oxford: Oxford University Press 2000), part 1, proposition 8, scholium 2 (p. 80).

12 August Messer, cited by Albert Burloud, La Pensée d’après les recherches expérimentales de Watt, de Messer et de Bühler (Paris: Alcan 1927), p. 69.

13 I am not ignoring the fact that these observations oblige me to deny entirely the existence of the unconscious. Here is not the place to discuss this.

14 We will see later what ‘to exist in a free state’ means for the material content of the mental image.

15 M. I. Meyerson, in his chapter ‘Les Images’, in Georges Dumas (ed.), Nouveau Traité de Psychologie vol. 2 (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France 1932), perpetually confuses sign, image, and symbol (see particularly pp. 574 and 581).

16 It is this observation that becomes quasi-observation in the case of the mental image.

17 Compare Edmund Husserl, Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy First Book: General Introduction to a Pure Phenomenology, translated by F. Kersten (The Hague, Boston, and London: Martinus Nijhoff 1982), § 111, pp. 261–2.

18 We are only interested in imitations that are not accompanied by make-up.

19 Of course, we are considering the theoretical case in which all the steps of consciousness are clearly distinct. It can also happen that an imitation resembles as closely as a portrait (for example, if the artist is made-up). In that case, we are back to the analyses in the preceding section.

20 Henri Bergson, Matter and Memory, translated by N. M. Paul and W. S. Palmer (New York: Zone Books 1988), p. 158.

21 Compare Edward Abramowski, Le Subconscient normal (Paris: Alcan 1914).

22 We should also speak of the consciousness of imitating, which is certainly a consciousness of being possessed.

23 It is possible that this way of organizing my perception is strictly peculiar to me. Readers can determine for themselves the processes that they use.

24 If one wants to account for the enormous disproportion that exists between the external representative element and the knowledge incorporated therein, one can consider examples like this one: let us imagine that a well-known personality is often represented in reviews and caricatures by the three following attributes: a straw hat, glasses, a pipe. Eventually, this personality is summarized in these three objects for the popular consciousness. If you arrange schematic representations of these three objects in any old order (for example: pipe, hat, glasses), you will have signs: from these three attributes we pass to the personality whom they are intended to evoke. If you arrange them in a natural order (hat, under the hat, glasses, under the glasses, pipe, at a suitable distance and in a suitable direction), you will have an image: the three attributes represent the face of the celebrity. Apart from these three drawn objects, the only intuitive elements are the order and the layout of these objects. Through this almost abstract quality we intend the celebrity as imaged. None of his features are truly realized on the paper: he is there, in an undifferentiated state, in the intermediate space between the hat and the pipe, space that we conceive as full – full of him.

25 Eugène B. Leroy, Les visions du demi-sommeil (Paris: Alcan 1926). One of his subjects said: ‘It is in sum like a cinematic representation in colour’, p. 111.

26 Journal des Goncourt, cited by Leroy, Les visions, p. 29.

27 Leroy, Les visions, p. 28.

28 Leroy, Les visions, p. 32.

29 Leroy, Les visions, p. 32. See also the whole book. For example: p. 17, Obs. VIII: ‘a luminous band whose colour I could not define’ etc.

30 Leroy, Les visions, p. 58.

31 Leroy, Les visions, p. 86.

32 Leroy, Les visions, p. 86. See also p. 45: ‘Suddenly, I notice that I see a car stopping in front of me’.

33 This observation shows, moreover, that the knowledge, in certain cases, can even precede the image.

34 See, for example, Quatre-vingt-un chapitres sur l’Esprit et les Passions (Paris: à l’Emancipatrice 1917).

35 See Yves Delage, Le Rêve (Paris: Lhomne 1920); Alfred Binet, Année psychologique, tome 1, pp. 424–5 (Paris: Alcan, 1894); Trumbul Ladd. Gellé, ‘Les images hypnagogiques’, Bulletin de l’Institut général de psychologie, 4e année, no. 1.

36 Leroy, Les visions, pp. 70–4.

37 Leroy, Les visions, p. 127.

38 Gellé, ‘Les images hypnagogiques’, p. 66.

39 All of these phenomena are very frequent, but one can have hypnagogic visions with one’s eyes open. See Leroy’s subject Pierre G.

40 Leroy, Les visions, p. 115.

41 Leroy, Les visions, p. 65.

42 Jacques Jean Lhermitte, Le Sommeil (Paris: Colin 1931), p. 142 ff.

43 Lhermitte, Le Sommeil, p. 148.

44 Lhermitte, Le Sommeil, p. 147.

45 Leroy, Les visions, p. 59.

46 Leroy, Les visions, p. 57.

47 Leroy, Les visions, p. 12.

48 See, for example: Mars ou la Guerre Jugée (Paris: Éditions de la Nouvelle Revue Française 1921).

49 Leroy, Les visions, p. 37.

50 See above, p. 39.

51 If the image is to depict the individual, ‘that which can never return’, the artist must specify this. For example, the artist who makes a sketch for a news report specifies: ‘The criminal at the moment when the jury pronounced its verdict’.

52 E. B. Titchener, Text-Book of Psychology (New York: Macmillan 1910), p. 198.

53 Georges Dwelshauvers, Traité de Psychologie (Paris: Payot 1928), p. 368.

PART II
THE PROBABLE

1 Karl Bühler, ‘Tatsachen und Probleme zu einer Psychologie der Denkvorgänge I: Über Gedanken’, Archiv für die Geschichte der Psychologie vol. 9 (1907), p. 321.

2 Edmund Husserl, Logical Investigations, two volumes, translated by J. N. Findlay and Dermot Moran (London and New York: Routledge 2001), Investigation I, Chapter 1 and Investigation IV, Chapter 1.

3 In the absence, naturally, of perception.

4 Schwiete, ‘Über die psychische Repräsentation der Begriffe’, Archiv für die Geschichte der Psychologie vol. 19 (1917), p. 475.

5 Albert Burloud, La Pensée d’après les recherches expérimentales de Watt, etc. (Paris: Alcan 1927), p. 68.

6 ‘Undergoes’ is not to be taken literally. Knowledge does not have in it the passivity to undergo anything. It would be better to say that knowledge gives itself a degradation.

7 Henri Bergson, Mind-Energy: Lectures and Essays, translated by H. Wildon Carr (London: Macmillan 1920), p. 186.

8 Bergson, Mind-Energy, p. 175; my emphasis.

9 Bergson, Mind-Energy, p. 186.

10 Bergson, Mind-Energy, p. 180.

11 Bergson, Mind-Energy, p. 163.

12 Bergson, Mind-Energy, p. 166. [Sartre writes ‘une certaine collaboration affective’ where Bergson writes ‘une certaine coloration affective’ – Jonathan Webber.]

13 Bergson, Mind-Energy, p. 164–6; compare pp. 186–7.

14 Bergson, Mind-Energy, p. 166; compare p. 176.

15 Compare Sigmund Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams, Volume 4 of The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud (London: The Hogarth Press and The Institute of Psychoanalysis, 1953), the dream of Irma, pp. 106–121.

16 A. Flach, ‘Über Symbolischen Schemata in produktiven Denkprozesz’, Archiv für die Geschichte der Psychologie vol. 2 (1900), pp. 369, 559.

17 Albert Spaier, ‘L’image mentale d’après les experiences d’introspection’, Revue Philosophique de la France et de l’Étranger vol. 77 (1914): 283–304.

18 Spaier, ‘L’image mentale’.

19 August Messer, ‘Experimental psychologische Untersuchungen des Denken’, Archiv für die Geschichte der Psychologie vol. 8 (1906), pp. 1–224. Messer arbitrarily characterises the type II consciousnesses by their affectivity.

20 See, for example, Alfred Binet, Étude expérimentale de l’intelligence (Paris: Schleicher frères 1903), p. 97.

21 Cited by Delacroix in Georges Dumas (ed.), Traité de Psychologie vol. 2 (Paris: Alcan 1924), p. 118.

22 We are leaving aside, of course, the role of affectivity in the reading consciousness.

23 Dwelshauvers, Traité de Psychologie, pp. 122 and 124.

24 Théodule Ribot, The Psychology of the Emotions, (London: Walter Scott, and New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons 1897).

25 It is necessary to make an exception of Pierre Janet (De l’Angoisse à l’Extase) and Henri Wallon who attempt to present affectivity as a particular class of conduct. This notion of conduct, which is certainly progress, remains nonetheless obscure and contradictory. See my little book Sketch for a Theory of the Emotions (London: Methuen 1962).

26 D. H. Lawrence, The Woman Who Rode Away in The Woman Who Rode Away and other stories (Harmondsworth: Penguin 1950), p. 53. See also the descriptions of the gardener in Lady Chatterley’s Lover (Harmondsworth: Penguin 1960), that of Don Cipriano in The Plumed Serpent (Harmondsworth: Penguin 1950), those of the captain in The Captain’s Doll in Three Novellas (Harmondsworth: Penguin 1960).

27 See Part I, Chapter 2, § I – ‘Image, Portrait, Caricature’.

28 Stendhal (Henri Beyle), The Life of Henry Brulard, translated by John Sturrock (Harmondsworth: Penguin 1995), p. 188.

29 Paul Guillaume, Imitation in Children, translated by Elaine P. Halperin (Chicago: University of Chicago Press 1971), pp. 3–26.

30 Georges Dwelshauvers, Les mécanismes subconscients (Paris: Alcan 1925).

31 Art. cit., p. 134, Fig. I.

32 Compare Georges Dwelshauvers, ‘L’enregistrement objectif de l’image mentale’, VIIth International Congress of Psychology (Moscow: Éditions d’État de littérature économique-sociale, 1931), and Les Mécanismes Subconscients.

33 Edmund Husserl, On the Phenomenology of the Consciousness of Internal Time (1893– 1917), translated by John Barnett Brough (Dordrecht, Boston, and London: Kluwer 1991).

34 It seems to me that a similar conception, which is sometimes supported – at least in appearance – by Dwelshauvers, is purely and simply devoid of all meaning.

35 See Part III, § I, below.

36 See Part II, § V, below.

37 See Part III, § II, below.

38 Burloud, La Pensée, pp. 71–2.

39 We have tried to explain the motor basis of the image by using only real movements, movements carried out. Today we know of the hypothesis of outline, sketchy, and suppressed movements, motor impressions whose origin is not in muscular contractions, presented by Raoul Mourgue in his book Neurobiologie de L’hallucination: Essai sur une Variété Particulière de Désintégration de la Fonction (Brussels: Lamertin 1932). It goes without saying that, if this interesting theory is confirmed, nothing of what I have said will need to be modified. It is enough to conceive that the imaging intention applies to these non-peripheral motor impressions. But I did not consider it my duty to give an account of these new conceptions here because they are not as yet sufficiently confirmed. We have therefore taken as valid William James’s famous theory of the peripheral origin of the feeling of effort.

40 I believe that the reported ‘visuals’ or ‘auditories’ are only people who do not know very well how to observe themselves and who have not perceived the real word that is the movement behind the image.

41 It is to be noted, however, that all the subjects (even without familiarity with psychology) spontaneously make the distinction between the perceived object and the imaged object.

42 Alain (Émile Auguste Chartier), Système des Beaux-Arts, new edition (Paris: Éditions de Nouvelle Revue Française 1920), p. 342.

43 Johann Dauber, ‘Die Gleichformigkeit des psychischen Geschehens und die Zeugenaussagen’, Fortschritte der Psychologie 1, no. 2 (1913): 83–131, pp. 100–1. [Sartre slightly misrepresents this data. I have emended the table in line with the article cited – Jonathan Webber.]

44 François Gorphe, La Critique du Témoignage (Paris: Dalloz 1924); Abramowski, Le Subconscient Normal.

45 See Part I, Chapter 2, § VII: From Portrait to Mental Image.

46 Leroy, Les visions.

PART III
THE ROLE OF THE IMAGE IN PSYCHIC LIFE

1 In this and the following paragraphs I employ for greater convenience turns of phrase and expressions that seem to give the irreal object a causal power over consciousness. It remains of course that this is metaphorical. It is easy to reconstruct the true processes. For example, an image has no persuasive power but we persuade ourselves by the very act in which we constitute the image.

2 A. Flach, ‘Über Symbolischen Schemata in produktiven Denkprozess’, pp. 369 ff.

3 ‘Consciousness of spheres’: an expression particularly employed by the Würzburg school psychologists and which designates a certain state of pure knowledge, anterior to the image – and by extension, thought, as it appears to the psychologist.

4 Herbert Silberer, Der Traum: Einführung in die Traumpsychologie (Stuttgart: Enke 1919).

5 Cited by Théodore Flournoy, Des phénomènes de synopsie (audition colorée), photismes, schèmes visuels, personnifications (Paris: Alcan 1893), p. 65.

6 I have since met, with a number of students and teachers, this effort to go beyond the image at the very time when it is formed. I had, in particular, an interesting observation of M. L. de R., student of philosophy.

7 Observation of R. S., student.

PART IV
THE IMAGINARY LIFE

1 It can happen, however, that I seek precisely to represent to myself this or that aspect of Pierre. But then a particular specification is required.

2 The area of perception itself is far from being pure quantity.

3 These intentions are analogous to those that constitute a static form out of kinaesthetic sensations.

4 It may be objected that this duration in the dream is given as real, just as are the objects that occupy it. This objection is founded on a misunderstanding of the deep nature of the dream. We will see later what should be thought about it.

5 It is not the same, of course, for the intentions that in perception impose on the objects perceived unperceived qualities whose existence we affirm. These are given from the outset as existing in the time and space of perceived objects. A simple example shows the difference: I see Pierre from behind. This very perception of the back of Pierre implies that he has a front; a ‘before’ and the face of Pierre, etc. are already aimed at in my perception of his back. They are given virtually in the same space. But if I want to represent to myself the face of Pierre in an explicit manner, I leave at once the domain of perception, the face of Pierre is ‘disconnected’ in some way from the body that I see from behind, it is irreally given to me in an irreal space. It is the same, of course, for temporal determinations.

6 It is for this reason that one cannot decide the spelling of a word without writing it. It is impossible for me to feel before the irreal object the change of physiognomy that the addition of one or several letters would bring.

7 This ‘being in the world’ is how I translate the ‘in-der-Welt-sein’ of Heidegger. We will see in the conclusion that this is just an appearance and that every image, on the contrary, must be constituted ‘on the ground of the world’.

8 Henri Piéron in Dumas (ed.), Nouveau Traité vol. 2, p. 38. I should remark that I have conducted numerous experiments without ever being able to note this pupillary dilation in the subjects. I even ask if it is not a case of one of those psychological legends as one can find, unfortunately, in the most serious works. But as one can always say that my experiments were badly executed, I draw no conclusions other than that the fact itself implies no contradiction. Besides, there are undeniable facts of the same order that require the same explanation: for example, the erection of the penis occasioned by voluptuous images.

9 Such as ‘gracious’, ‘arousing’, ‘sympathetic’, ‘light’, ‘heavy’, ‘fine’, ‘worrying’, ‘horrible’, ‘repugnant’, etc.

10 I have long been opposed to the existence of an affective memory. But my reflections on the imagination have made me change opinion. It is not true that when I recall my shame of yesterday, there is nothing in my consciousness but a present knowledge or a present abstract emotion (or a complete feeling), but the abstract emotion serves as matter for a special intentionality that aims through it at the feeling that I had yesterday. In other words, the real feeling is not necessarily given for itself: it can serve as ‘hylé’ – on the condition that it is not too strong. In that case we are dealing with an imaging consciousness whose correlate will be yesterday’s feeling irreally present. I admit therefore the existence of an affective memory and of an affective imagination. For it is by a similar process that we try to realize the feelings of a stranger, a lunatic, a criminal, etc. It is not true that we limit ourselves to producing a real abstract emotion in us. We want to render present in an irreal state the feelings of a lunatic, a criminal, etc. in so far as these feelings belong to them.

11 See Jean Philippe’s book, L’Image mentale, évolution et dissolution (Paris: Alcan 1903), which is very remarkable for the period.

12 It is not so much because, as we have the habit of saying, one foresees the future in the past: this argument is valid only against the old conception of images. But rather because one foresees the real with the irreal, which is to say the one whose riches are infinite by means of schemas with an essential poverty.

13 For this essential poverty of reveries, see Blanche Reverchon-Jouve and Pierre-Jean Jouve, ‘Moments d’une psychanalyse’, Nouvelle Revue Française 40 (1933), p. 356:

It was at the beginning of the war (1915) and at the age of eleven that Mlle H … became more and more attached to a unique reverie that became gradually systematized, had grouped a certain variety of elements while becoming more set and fixed; a reverie whose interest she sustained by all sorts of researches in dictionaries and magazines as soon as her fantasy failed her…. Her life was so fatally pushed by the reverie that outside the hours spent in bed dreaming, she went to the libraries in order to find new elements that she needed in order to enrich, to always enlarge the weave of the reverie.’

The case of Mlle H … is otherwise very interesting, and it is to be regretted that psychoanalysis crushed it with massive, pretentious, and absurd interpretations.

14 Adrien Borel and Gilbert Robin, ‘Les Rêveries morbides’, Annales Médico-psychologiques 82, no. 3 (1924), pp. 239–40. Nor was Mlle H …, who I cited above, any more mistaken about the reality of her images: ‘Mlle H … always knew that the story was fictitious, but also thought that it contained the truth in what concerned her’ (Blanche Reverchon-Jouve and Pierre-Jean Jouve, ‘Moments d’une psychanalyse’, pp. 362–3).

15 Daniel Lagache, Les Hallucinations Verbales et la Parole (Paris: Alcan 1934), p. 164. See also Pierre Janet, L’Hallucination dans le Délire de Persécution (Paris: Revue de Philosophie 1932).

16 Lagache, Les Hallucinations Verbales et la Parole, p. 164.

17 Lagache, Les Hallucinations Verbales et la Parole, p. 89.

18 Dr T …, specialist in diseases of the nervous system, told me of a patient who, following a case of encephalitis, was able to adjust himself correctly to a social situation (for example, to a conversation with a doctor) but who, when left alone, fell into a drowsiness accompanied by hallucinations.

19 This arises from the very fact that, at the moment when he claims to be speaking himself, he claims also to be speaking to X who is absent. This is enough to make the active voice something strictly abnormal.

20 Likewise it must not be believed that in the conversation imagined by a schizophrenic, the schizophrenic’s interlocutor is irreal while the schizophrenic retains a coefficient of reality: they are both irreal and the phrases that they pronounce to one another (although these can be effectively muttered) are irreal. See also the role of the Me in the dream, later on.

21 See Pierre Janet, Obsessions et La Psychasthénie vol. 1 (Paris: Alcan 1903).

22 Under the influence of certain conditions, however, psychaesthenics can momentarily present a delirium of influence.

23 It can vary, passing from high to low for example, but this is not indispensable.

24 Gaëtan Gatian de Clérambault, ‘Psychose à base d’automatisme et syndromes d’automatisme’, Annales Médico-psychologiques 85, no. 1(1927), p. 193.

25 Cited by Lagache, Les Hallucinations Verbales et la Parole, p.119.

26 Contradiction being a synthesis supposes a general form of unification.

27 I will better explain this symbolism in the section on the Dream.

28 Naturally these explicit positings do not need to be articulated judgements.

29 René Descartes, ‘First Meditation’ of Meditations on First Philosophy, in The Philosophical Writings of Descartes Vol. 2, translated by John Cottingham, Robert Stoothof, and Dugald Murdoch (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press 1984), p. 13.

30 It will be objected that it has happened to everyone, in the course of an agreeable dream, that they say ‘this time I am not dreaming’ and that, consequently, reflection itself seems subject to error in the dream. We will see later what we should think of this objection.

31 See my little book Imagination.

32 See Part II, § I: Knowledge.

33 The question is, to tell the truth, much more complicated and even in the dream consciousness conserves its ‘being-in-the-world’, at least in a certain fashion. But we can retain this idea of a lost ‘being-in-the-world’, at least in the capacity of a metaphoric indication.

34 In the first edition of L’Imaginaire, a line of text seemed to jump. In the absence of a manuscript, I venture to fill the gap with these few words in brackets [Arlette Elkaïm-Sartre].

35 The persistence of these orders could itself be the object of a long study, but we cannot begin this study in this work.

CONCLUSION

1 It is in this sense that a beginner in the theatre can say that stage fright served to represent the timidity of Ophelia. If it did so, it is because the actor suddenly irrealized it, which is to say that she ceased to apprehend it for itself and that she grasped it as an analogon of Ophelia’s timidity.

INDEX

A., R. 114–15

Abramowski, Edward 89

Abschattungen 9

absence 11–14, 20, 142, 187

actors 20, 191;

see also imitation

aesthetic contemplation 188–94

affectivity 28–9, 61, 68–73, 91, 134, 141;

affective analogon 102, 105, 129;

affective reality 87;

affective schema 138;

affective state 139;

knowledge and 84, 89

Aga Khan 166

Alain (Émile Auguste Chartier) 47, 88, 92;

Système des beaux-arts 38, 39

analogon 18, 22, 28, 52, 53, 77, 78, 80, 81, 85, 87, 137, 181, 190, 193;

affective 90;

external 120;

function of 84;

kinaesthetic 102;

presence 91

animation 25, 28, 41, 127

anticipation 181–2

association 107–8

associationism 22, 60, 68

automatism 43

auto-suggestion 41, 44

auto-symbolism 107, 109

B., Mlle 165–6, 168, 170

Baillarger, Jules-Gabriel-François 43

Baudelaire, Charles 62, 99, 102, 109

becoming, a 61

Beethoven, Ludwig van:

Seventh Symphony 191–3

behaviourists 92

Bergson, Henri 8, 42, 60–1, 62, 88, 131, 187;

dynamic schema 60–1, 62;

Matter and Memory 27;

Time and Free Will 131–2

Berkeley, George 15, 16, 128;

esse est percipi 128

Berlin 110

Bewusstein 3

Binet, Alfred 66, 112;

engravings 98, 107, 108, 109;

latent images 64

Bismarck, Prince Otto von 110

black magic 24

Brentano, Franz 68

Brunschvicg, Léon:

Orientation du Rationalisme 114–15

Bühler, Karl 6, 58, 65

Burloud, Albert 59, 82

captive consciousness 41, 44, 47

caricature 17–20, 29, 52

cave paintings 24

Charles VIII, King 23, 180, 183, 188–9

Chevalier, Maurice 20, 25, 26–7, 28, 29, 51

clairvoyants 49

Claparède, Édouard 154, 170

Clérambault, Gaëtan Gatian de 155–6

cock-and-bull stories 157

compossibility 118

comprehension 115;

imaged 101–6;

pure 101–6

condensation 68

Conrad, Joseph 39

contiguity 25, 69

Crivelli 149

crystal ball 49

dancers 143

degradation 59, 63, 67, 84

derivation 68

Descartes, René 4, 32, 151, 175;

cogito ergo sum 148, 156, 160, 180, 186, 188;

First Meditation 159–61;

ideas and memories of ideas 104

description 5

determinism 47, 184

diagrams 107

drawing 35;

see also schematic drawings

dreams 41, 44, 62, 63, 91, 130, 146–8, 152, 159–75;

see also hallucinations

Dumas, Georges 68, 149

duration 131–2

Dürer, Albrecht: ‘The Knight, Death and the Devil’ 20, 24, 49

Dwelshauvers, Georges 67, 68, 73, 74–5, 76, 77

dynamic schema 60–1, 62

effigies 24

engraving 20, 24, 49

engravings (Binet) 98, 107, 108, 109

entoptic lights 20, 40, 45, 46, 47–8, 49, 52

equivalence 51

essential poverty 9, 51, 133, 146 147, 167

experimental psychology 53

expressive nature 28, 29

eye movements 32–3, 35–6, 76, 127

facial contamination 91

fatalism 47

Fichte, J. G. 109

Flach, A. 6, 62, 78, 102, 103, 104, 107, 108, 109, 115, 117–20;

illustrations of thought 98;

symbolic schema 62, 78, 98–101, 102–6, 107–12, 113–14, 115–16

flesh of the object 16

Florence 110

Flournoy, Théodore 108–9

Franconay 25, 26–7, 28, 51

Freud, Sigmund 168

Furtwängler, Wilhelm 192

Galton, Francis 113

Gide, André:

Counterfeiters 116

Goethe, J. W. von 115, 134

Goncourt brothers 37

Gorphe, François 89

Guillaume, Paul 73

Halbwachs, Maurice 168

hallucinations 148–59

Hals, Frans 32

Heidegger, Martin 184, 187

Hesnard 71

Hume, David 5–6, 15, 21;

idea and impression 5–6;

sign and image 21

Husserl, Edmund 29, 59, 68, 121, 149;

retentions and protentions 25, 75, 76, 77, 79, 81, 104

Huxley, Aldous:

Point Counter Point 193

Huysmans, J.-K. 62, 99

hypnagogic imagery 20, 36, 37–49, 51, 86, 87, 90, 135, 163–4, 165–6, 167, 175

hypothesis 34

ideas and impressions 5–6

identity:

principle of 91–3

illusion of immanence, the 5, 6, 18–19, 25, 43, 53, 59, 62, 83, 103, 180

illustrations of thought 107–12

image:

caricature and 17–20;

consciousness 5–7, 11–14, 15, 24, 26, 34, 49, 53, 179;

elements 92;

essence of 4;

and its object 23–4;

latent 64;

movement and 73–83;

perception and 8–9, 12, 14, 29, 31–4, 35, 50, 120–2, 180;

portrait and 17–20;

primary or constituent layer 136;

secondary or reaction layer 136;

sign and 21–5;

thought and 8–9, 97, 112–20;

see also mental image

imaging assertions 97

imitation 17, 20, 25–9, 26, 27, 51, 52, 53, 90

impersonation, see imitation impressions:

ideas and 5–6;

visual 75–6, 77

indeterminacy 27

individuation 9, 38, 89, 90–1, 132

inductive claims 5

intention 11, 18, 19, 25, 57, 58;

empty 46

interpenetration 61, 62

involuntary evocation 18–19

irreal, the 3, 63, 125–36, 136–48, 182, 186, 189

James, William 22, 25, 68, 69

Janet, Pierre 126, 149, 150, 153, 154

judgements 97

Kant, Immanuel 44, 65, 144, 179, 191;

Critique of Judgement 135

kinaesthetics 43;

kinaesthetic analogon 102;

kinaesthetic impressions 77, 78, 80, 127, 134;

kinaesthetic sensations 74, 76, 81

knowledge:

affectivity and 84, 89;

consciousness 34;

degradation 59, 63, 67, 84;

imaging 66, 67;

protentional 78;

pure 66, 67, 97, 105;

retentional 78;

words and 59

Koffka, Kurt 121

Köhler, Wolfgang 30, 36, 121

L., Paul 152

La Rochefoucauld, François, Duc de 69

Lagache, Daniel 150, 151, 152

law of interest 71

Lawrence, D. H. 69–70

Leroy, Eugène B. 37, 38, 40, 41, 42, 43, 62, 91, 163, 172

Lhermitte, Jacques Jean 40, 42

love-esteem 68

Marie B. 148

memory 10, 181–2

mental image 7, 18, 20, 52–3, 120;

essential characteristic 72–3;

mode of appearance 85–93;

portrait and 50–1;

words and 83–5;

see also image

Messer, August 15, 58, 59, 101;

schematic representations 107

metaphysics 179

Meyerson, M. I. 83

Michelangelo:

David 110–12

Midas, King 175

mirages 148

mirror reflections 17

motivation 108

Moutier, F. 6, 92

movements 73–83, 134

Müller–Lyer illusion 33

Nahlowsky, Joseph 68

natures (universal essences) 13

nightmares 161;

see also dreams

nonexistence 11–14, 20, 35

nothingness 11–14, 182

obsession 153–4

oneiric delirium 45

oneiric symbolism 168

overflowing 9, 10

Panthéon, the 38, 86–8, 128, 131

paralysis 41, 43, 44

paramnesia 194

Pascal, Blaise:

love-esteem 68

perception 32–3;

image and 8–9, 12, 14, 29, 31–4, 35, 39, 50, 120–2, 180;

seeing and 120

perspective 38

phosphenes 40, 41, 44, 163

photographs, see portraits

Pieron, Henri 73–4, 136, 138

plane of presences 106

Platonism 193

polymorphism 62

portrait 6, 17, 32, 52, 53;

consciousness 26;

image and 17–20;

imitation and 27;

mental image and 50–1;

sign and 21–5

positional act, the 11–12

possession 29

possibilities 169

presentifying 105, 125, 182

protention 25, 75, 76, 77, 79, 81, 104

Proust, Marcel 68, 146, 164

Prussia 110

psychaesthenics 44, 126, 156

psychic synthesis 137

psychoanalysis 97

quasi-observation 8–11, 13, 15, 28, 37, 51, 57, 72, 84, 122, 132, 154

reading 63–5, 66–8, 171

reflection 4–5, 6–7, 8, 15, 69

relation of possession 83

relations 58

Renaissance 109, 110–12

representation 15, 20, 30, 35–6, 46, 50, 52, 53, 60, 68, 69, 80, 107, 185

resemblance 21, 22, 25, 29

retention 25, 75, 76, 77, 79, 81, 104

Revault d’Allonnes 192

Ribot, Théodule 68, 71

ritual 29

Rouen museum 22

rules 58

Sachverhalt 106

Scheler, Max 68

schematic drawings 29–34, 35–6, 51, 76, 80–1

schematic representations 107

schizophrenia 146–8, 168

Schopenhauer, Arthur 114, 191

Schraub 52

Schwiete 59

seeing:

perception and 120

Séglas, Jules 155

Shakespeare, William:

Hamlet 191

sign 21;

consciousness 24, 26, 53, 84;

essential role of 26;

image and 21–5;

and its object 23–4;

portrait and 21–5;

schematic drawing and 29–34;

word and 23

signifying synthesis 26, 59

Silberer, Herbert 107

Sistine Chapel Madonna 58, 65

situation 186, 187

Socrates 111

Spaier, Albert 6, 62, 67, 127;

dawn of the image 62, 67–8

Spinoza, Baruch de 13, 163

spontaneity 14, 32–3, 34, 51

statics of the image 15, 16

Stendhal (Henri Beyle) 73

Stoics 153

stream of consciousness 68

sublimation 68

symbol 97–106;

definition 98–101

symbolic movement 51

symbolic schema 62, 78, 81, 98–101, 102–6, 107–12, 113–14, 115–16

symbolic thought 97

synaesthesias 81, 108–9

syndrome of influence 156

synopses 107, 109

syntheses 107;

psychic 137;

signifying 26, 59

Taine, Hippolyte 60, 85, 86, 148

theory of constellations 71

thought:

illustrations of 98;

image and 8–9, 97, 112–20;

symbolic 97;

unreflective 112

Titchener, E. B. 4

Toscanini 191

transcendence of the representative 53

transference 68

transversal consciousness 14

trompe-l’oeil 23

Uffizi Gallery, Florence 23

Van Bogart 42

Venus de Milo 111

vertigo 155

visual impressions 75–6, 77

Watt, Henry 15

Wertheimer, Max 30, 121

Wilde, Oscar 62, 99

will 19

Wolff, Christian 126;

reditur integra perceptio 126

words 21, 97;

knowledge and 59;

mental image and 83–5;

signs and 23

Würzburg psychologists 63, 82, 97, 108, 127

Zola, Emile:

Nana 99