The different ways in which imagination was spoken of in the educational field were shrouded in ambiguities. Sometimes welcomed and desired, sometimes feared for the troubles it might cause to the production of the child as a future citizen. The discourse unfolded, identifying nuances in these ambiguities and anxieties, above all through the lines drawn between good and evil imaginations. The imaginative child as a kind of person was already a reality, with more than one way to be lived. Imagination was never denied in education, but its threatening and desired presence was approached as the scope for better governing the child's mind. As such, borders between different kinds of imagination had to be defined. In this 1884 book, the English psychologist James Sully dedicated two chapters to Reproductive Imagination and Productive Imagination, which included creative imagination. These differentiations also served to differentiate different kinds of children. Classifications created the boundaries of what could be imagined in educational settings and traced the pathological and threatening sides of imagination.
CM
book by James Sully, first published in 1884.
Chapter VIII - Reproductive Imagination
Chapter IX - Productive Imagination (it has a section on creative imagination)
"Reproduction involves, as we have seen, the picturing of objects and events in what are called representative images, and is thus a form of imagination. In these reproductives processes, however, the images are supposed to be mere copies of past impressions. In reproductive imagination we retrace the actual forms and order of our presentative or sense-experience. But what is commonly known as imagination implies more than this. When we imagine an unrealised event of the future, or a place which is described to us, we are going beyond our actual experience. The images of memory are being in some way modified, transformed, and recombines. Hence this process is marked off as Productive or as Constructive Imagination. It is this productive process which is specially referred to by the term Imagination." (p. 223)
"What we mean by productive imagination consists merely in carrying out certain changes or modifications in that reflexion of our sense-experience which is supplied by the reproductive process. Such changes must in general consist of two kinds: (1) a process of separation or subtraction, and (2) a process of combination or addition." (p.224)
"Since, however, visual presentations constitute the most complex class, presenting, moreover, the double complexity of a local juxtaposition of parts, and a combination of the heterogeneous and easily separable elements of colour and form, the imaginative process as commonly understood is specially concerned with unmaking and remaking visual or pictorial representations.
Such imaginative manipulation of the material of sense-experience plays a large part in mental development. It is very far from being, as sometimes supposed, a mere pastime of the mind, but enters, as we shall presently see, as an integral factor into the development of intelligence." (p. 225)
"It follows from this brief account of the productive process that all imaginative activity is limited by experience. To begin with, then, since production is merely an elaboration of presentative material, there can be no such thing as a perfectly new creation. The greatest imaginative genius would strive in vain to picture a wholly new colour.
But, again, the processes of separation and combination are themselves conditioned and limited. When two things have always been conjoined in our experience it is impossible to picture them apart. Thus, though we may imaginatively vary the colour of an object at pleasure, we cannot picture it as having no colour at all. Not only so, it may be said that the more uniformly two things are conjoined, the more difficult it becomes to dissociate them." (p. 226)
"It is customary to distinguish between a passive and an active process of imagination according as the changes just described are carried out unconsciously, or at least without any effort of voluntary attention, or involve this active factor. A word or two will serve to illustrate the distinction.
Passive imagination is that part of the unmaking and remaking which is done for us by the so-called spontaneous or mechanical workings of our psycho-physical organism. As already remarked, the images of memory tend to become transformed by a passive, unconscious, or automatic process. [...] At a given moment a number of external impressions and organic sensations may occur together for the first time, each tending to recall a separate group of images. But such partial contemporaneous revivels of disconnected elements new juxtapositions and groupings arise. This process is clearly illustrated in the grotesque combinations that arise quite spontaneously in the childish mind before the habit of inhabiting these as useless has been formed." (p. 226, 227)
"While, however, much production takes place in this unconscious or sub-conscious manner, the higher and more valuable forms of it involve an active regulative factor. Here, as in the case of active reproduction, we have the work of voluntary attention, the aiding of certain tendencies, and the counteracting of others, in order to reach a particular desired result. It is only when the productive process is thus controlled and guided by the will that it becomes in the full sense what we mean by construction, i.e., an orderly, methodical bringing tegether and arranging of parts in a new organic whole." (p. 227)
"Again, active production is aided by the automatic regrouping of elements just described. Active and passive imagination are not wholly distinct, but the former includes the latter. Much of the highest imaginative work of the poet is due to the action of those sub-conscious forces which are ever at work bringing about novel combinations of imaginative elements. The initial idea is in most, if not all, cases of such active imagination the outcome of this automatic action." (p. 228)
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Chapter VIII - Reproductive…
Chapter VIII - Reproductive Imagination
Chapter IX - Productive Imagination