Fantasy and imagination – from psychoanalysis to cultural psychology

In his impressive historical chapter, Cornejo proposes to explore the major contributions to the study of fantasy before a new, modern psychology reduced it to mere reproductive imagination, losing much of the depth of the initial notion. Fantasy was forgotten by psychology, he argues, and let to other disciplines emerging at the 19th century, such as psychoanalysis and phenomenology. Against a psychology without soul, Cornejo invites cultural psychology to draw on insights of the past to bring about a theorization of imagination “with soul” in cultural psychology.
In this chapter, I propose to complement Cornejo’s project by exploring, first, fields neighboring psychology in which fantasy kept some of its initial richness, especially psychoanalysis and anthropology. Second, I recall that some approaches in psychology did maintain a non-rationalistic imagination after the creation of a scientific psychology. Third, drawing on these points, I finally suggest one possible way to theorize fantasy or imagination within cultural psychology.