Jung's psychology challenges modern assumptions about subjectivity, but his thinking shows an underlying bias toward introversion. While his work on synchronicity addressed this bias, its clinical implications remain unclear. The author introduces imaginal action as a corrective, describing relational synchronicity where the intrapsychic emerges non-projectively within the interpersonal field. This contrasts with the more introverted practice of active imagination. Imaginal action is proposed as a distinctly Jungian approach to the psychoanalytic notion of enactment, with further support from transpersonal psychology.
The participatory paradigm, associated with transpersonalists Richard Tarnas and Jorge Ferrer, offers a non-reductive approach to Jung's archetypal thinking for clinical practice. Examining debates about 'truth' in the clinical setting, the author argues that any therapy oriented toward 'the unconscious' must make pluralism a central concern. The relational commitment to constructivist epistemologies in psychoanalysis tends toward biological reductionism, while analytical psychology faces similar tensions. The process-oriented, speculative nature of Jung's psychology provides a more adequate basis for contemporary practice than is often assumed.