The Imaginary is Sartre’s systematic phenomenological study of imagination and image-consciousness. Rejecting empiricist and associationist accounts that treat images as mental copies of perception, Sartre argues that imagination is a distinct intentional act of consciousness that posits its object as irreally present, or “nothingnessed,” rather than perceptually given. He differentiates imagination from perception and memory, analyzes the structure of image-consciousness, and shows how the imaginary underpins emotion, aesthetic experience, the constitution of the self, and freedom. The work develops Sartre’s concept of consciousness as spontaneous, non-substantial, and world-transcending, and anticipates central themes of his existential ontology, including negation, nihilation, and the interplay between facticity and transcendence.

At a Glance

Quick Facts

Author: Jean-Paul Sartre
Composed: 1936–1939
Language: French
Status: original survives

Key Arguments

•Imagination as a distinct intentional mode: Sartre contends that imagination is not a weakened form of perception but a fundamentally different intentional act in which consciousness posits its object as absent, nonexistent, or ‘irreal,’ thereby constituting it in a mode of non-being rather than presence.
•The image is not a thing in the mind: Against the ‘mental picture’ model, Sartre argues that there is no internal image-object housed in consciousness; instead, the so-called image is the correlate of a specific act of imagining, a way of directing consciousness toward an object under an irreal mode of appearance.
•Negation and nihilation in imagination: Sartre holds that all imagining involves a form of nihilation—consciousness distances itself from the actual world and negates straightforward presence, revealing the capacity of consciousness to introduce nothingness into being and thus prefiguring his existential account of freedom.
•Distinction between perception, memory, and imagination: Sartre carefully differentiates perception (which presents its object as existing and spatially located), memory (which presents its object as past and once present), and imagination (which presents its object as absent, neutral with respect to existence, or explicitly nonexistent).
•Imagination, emotion, and freedom: The imaginary underlies emotional transformation and aesthetic experience, allowing consciousness to remodel the world symbolically; this capacity reveals freedom as the ability to detach from given reality, construct possibilities, and choose meanings beyond empirical constraints.

Historical Significance

The Imaginary is now seen as a foundational text for Sartre’s existential phenomenology and a landmark in 20th‑century philosophy of mind and imagination. It develops a critical alternative to empiricist and psychoanalytic theories of images, articulates a non-representational intentional theory of imagination, and introduces the idea that consciousness is essentially nihilating and free. The work significantly influenced later phenomenological and existential discussions of consciousness, aesthetics, and emotion, and it prefigures key theses of Being and Nothingness and Sartre’s literary theory.

Famous Passages

The example of Pierre’s absence in the café (nihilation of the object)(Typically discussed in English editions in the context of Sartre’s analysis of nothingness and absence (often cross-referenced with Being and Nothingness, Part I, Chapter 1); in The Imaginary it is presupposed by his general account of absence and irreal objects.)

The imagined friend and the photo-image analysis(Early chapters analyzing how a photograph or drawing functions as an analogon (often in Part I, Chapter 1–2, in most English editions).)

The portrait and the analogon (image-support) discussion(Part I, in the treatment of the physical image-support as analogon for the imagined object (commonly Chapter 2 in English translations).)

Examples of emotional transformation through imagination (e.g., transforming a threatening situation via fantasy)(Later sections, especially in the final part dealing with the role of imagination in affective and existential life (commonly Part IV in English translations).)

Key Terms

Imagination (imagination): For Sartre, a distinct intentional act of consciousness by which an object is posited as irreal—absent, nonexistent, or ‘nothingnessed’—rather than perceptually present.

Image-consciousness (conscience imageante): The specific mode of [consciousness](/terms/consciousness/) in which an object appears as imagined, characterized by spontaneity, absence of the object, and a nihilating distance from the real world.

Analogon: The material support (such as a photograph, drawing, or verbal description) that serves as the vehicle for imagining while not itself being the imagined object.

Irreal object (objet irréel): The object as it appears in imagination, lacking actual presence in space and time, constituted by consciousness in a mode of non-being rather than existence.

Nihilation (néantisation): Consciousness’s power to introduce nothingness into being by distancing itself from the given world, exemplified in imagination’s positing of absent or nonexistent objects.

1. Introduction

Sartre’s The Imaginary: A Phenomenological Psychology of the Imagination is a systematic examination of how human beings imagine, and what it means for an object to be “given” in imagination rather than in perception or memory. Written in the late 1930s within a Husserlian phenomenological framework, it proposes that imagination is not a pale copy of perception, but a distinctive intentional act with its own structure and kind of object.

Sartre’s inquiry aims to describe, from the first-person point of view, what occurs when one imagines a friend’s face, a fictional character, or an unreal event. He asks how such objects can be present to consciousness despite their absence or nonexistence, and what this reveals about consciousness itself. The work thereby links the psychology of imagination to broader issues about consciousness, nothingness, and freedom.

The book positions itself against empiricist, associationist, and certain psychological accounts that treat images as internal pictures or weakened sensory impressions. Sartre instead develops an account of image-consciousness in which the so‑called image is the correlate of a spontaneous act that posits its object as irreal. This project, while focused on imagination, also serves as a laboratory for themes that would later be expanded in his existential ontology.

2. Historical and Intellectual Context

Sartre develops The Imaginary against a background marked by 19th‑century empiricism, early 20th‑century phenomenology, and contemporary psychology. The following overview situates the work within these currents:

Context	Relevance to The Imaginary
British and French empiricism (Hume, Taine)	Images treated as faint copies of impressions or associative “ideas,” a view Sartre examines and rejects.
Early experimental psychology (Wundt, Titchener, Ribot)	Imagination analyzed as a mental faculty or series of inner pictures, often through introspection and laboratory methods.
Bergson and French spiritualism	Emphasis on intuition, durée, and creative imagination; provides a contrasting, more metaphysical approach to mind.
Husserlian phenomenology	Central methodological source; intentionality and the analysis of acts versus objects shape Sartre’s account of image-consciousness.
Psychoanalysis (Freud)	Positions imagination in relation to desire, repression, and fantasy; Sartre selectively appropriates and often criticizes these themes.

Within phenomenology, Sartre engages especially with Husserl’s analyses of intentionality, perception, and image-consciousness in the Logical Investigations and Ideas. At the same time, debates in interwar France over scientific psychology versus philosophical reflection inform his ambition to offer a “phenomenological psychology,” positioned between empirical science and pure transcendental philosophy.

The political and cultural context of 1930s Europe—marked by rising totalitarianism and impending war—does not directly shape Sartre’s technical arguments about imagination, but commentators often suggest it colors his interest in freedom, transcendence of facticity, and the capacity to “nihilate” given reality through imaginary possibilities.

3. Author, Composition, and Publication

Sartre’s Position in His Intellectual Trajectory

When composing The Imaginary (1936–1939), Jean‑Paul Sartre was an emerging French philosopher influenced by Husserl and Heidegger, with prior training in the French lycée system and the École Normale Supérieure. He had already written L’Imagination (1936), a shorter and more historical‑critical study of theories of imagination, and La Transcendance de l’ego (1936), where he first articulated a non‑substantial view of consciousness.

Composition and Development

The Imaginary extends the critiques and questions of L’Imagination into a constructive phenomenological psychology. Scholars generally hold that Sartre wrote the book after his 1933–1934 stay in Berlin, where he studied Husserl’s manuscripts. During the late 1930s he refined his analyses of perception, image-consciousness, and emotion, integrating literary examples with phenomenological description.

Aspect	Detail
Period of composition	Approximately 1936–1939
Main influences	Husserl, Heidegger, French psychology, earlier essay L’Imagination
Relation to later work	Anticipates and prepares Being and Nothingness (1943)

Publication History

L’Imaginaire was first published in French in 1940 by Gallimard, as a philosophical treatise rather than a popular work. Its release coincided with the outbreak of World War II, which limited its immediate circulation. No substantial revisions are known for the first edition, and the original text is preserved.

In English, the work appeared as The Psychology of Imagination (trans. Bernard Frechtman, 1948), a somewhat freer rendering that influenced early Anglophone reception. A later translation by Jonathan Webber, The Imaginary: A Phenomenological Psychology of the Imagination (Routledge, 2004/2010), aims at closer fidelity to Sartre’s terminology and structure, and has become a standard reference in contemporary scholarship.

4. Structure and Organization of The Imaginary

Sartre organizes The Imaginary into an introduction and four main parts, each addressing a distinct set of phenomenological problems.

Part	Title (typical English renderings)	Main Focus
Introduction	Program of a Phenomenological Psychology of the Imagination	Lays out method, critiques prior theories, and defines the project.
Part I	The Nature of the Image and Image-Consciousness	Analyses what an “image” is, introduces analogon and irreal object.
Part II	Imagination, Perception, and Memory	Compares imagination with perception and memory via their intentional structures.
Part III	The Structures and Types of Image-Consciousness	Classifies forms of imagination and explores temporal/affective aspects.
Part IV	Imagination, Emotion, and the Human World	Examines the role of imagination in emotion, art, and our practical world.

Internal Progression

The progression is cumulative:

Methodological grounding (Introduction) – Sartre specifies his phenomenological approach and rejects “image as mental picture” models.
Foundational description (Part I) – He details the basic structure of image-consciousness, distinguishing object, analogon, and consciousness’s transcendence of the image-support.
Differentiation from neighboring acts (Part II) – He refines the concept by contrast with perception and memory, using concrete examples.
Systematic classification (Part III) – Various modes of imagining (reproductive, anticipatory, symbolic, etc.) are examined to uncover stable structures.
Extension to affective and practical life (Part IV) – The earlier analyses of image-consciousness are brought to bear on emotion, aesthetic experience, and human freedom.

This architecture is intended to move from methodological clarification, through eidetic description, to broader psychological and existential implications, while keeping imagination as the constant focal phenomenon.

5. Central Arguments and Key Concepts

Core Theses about Imagination

Sartre advances several interconnected claims about imagination:

Claim	Content
Distinct intentional mode	Imagination is not weakened perception but a specific intentional act that posits its object as absent, neutral, or unreal.
No inner image-object	What is called an “image” is not a picture in the mind; it is the way consciousness directs itself toward an object as irreal.
Nihilating function	In imagining, consciousness “nihilates” the real world, introducing a distance that reveals its power to constitute non-being.

Proponents of Sartre’s approach emphasize its explanatory power for fiction, counterfactual thinking, and the experience of possibilities. Critics argue that it may understate the role of mental representation and neural imagery, or the continuity between imagination and perception.

Key Concepts

Imagination (imagination) – A spontaneous act of consciousness that posits an object as irreal rather than existent.
Image-consciousness (conscience imageante) – The specific mode in which consciousness intends an object as imagined. Sartre analyzes its structure to show how the so‑called image is constituted.
Analogon – A material or symbolic support (e.g., photograph, drawing, verbal description) that occasions imagining without being the imagined object itself. Consciousness “leaps” from the analogon to the irreal object.
Irreal object (objet irréel) – The object as imagined: not present in space and time, but given “as if” present.
Nihilation (néantisation) – The operation by which consciousness distances itself from the given world, making absence and non-being manifest through imagination.

These concepts jointly underpin Sartre’s argument that imagination reveals a fundamental structure of consciousness: its capacity to exceed factual reality by positing what is not, or not yet, and thereby to open a field of possibilities.

6. Legacy and Historical Significance

The Imaginary has come to be regarded as a pivotal work in 20th‑century philosophy of mind, phenomenology, and existential thought. Its immediate impact in 1940 was limited by wartime conditions, but within specialist circles it contributed to the reception and transformation of Husserlian phenomenology in France.

Historically, commentators view the book as a bridge between Sartre’s early phenomenological essays and his later existential ontology in Being and Nothingness. Its analyses of nihilation, irreal objects, and spontaneous consciousness are often read as preparatory for his accounts of freedom, bad faith, and the for‑itself.

In the philosophy of imagination, Sartre’s rejection of the “mental picture” model influenced subsequent phenomenological discussions and provided a foil for analytic theories that emphasize internal representations. Some cognitive scientists and philosophers of mind continue to engage critically with his insistence on act-structure rather than inner images.

In aesthetics and literary theory, The Imaginary has informed studies of fiction, pictorial representation, and the reader’s or viewer’s role in constituting imaginary worlds. Scholars working on emotion and affect also draw on Sartre’s treatment of the imaginary transformation of situations.

More broadly, the book is cited as an early, rigorous articulation of a non-naturalistic yet descriptively precise approach to consciousness, one that continues to shape debates about the relation between phenomenology, psychology, and cognitive science.

How to Cite This Entry

Use these citation formats to reference this work entry in your academic work. Click the copy button to copy the citation to your clipboard.

APA Style (7th Edition)

Philopedia. (2025). the-imaginary-a-phenomenological-psychology-of-the-imagination-the-imaginary. Philopedia. https://philopedia.com/works/the-imaginary-a-phenomenological-psychology-of-the-imagination-the-imaginary/

MLA Style (9th Edition)

"the-imaginary-a-phenomenological-psychology-of-the-imagination-the-imaginary." Philopedia, 2025, https://philopedia.com/works/the-imaginary-a-phenomenological-psychology-of-the-imagination-the-imaginary/.

Chicago Style (17th Edition)

Philopedia. "the-imaginary-a-phenomenological-psychology-of-the-imagination-the-imaginary." Philopedia. Accessed December 11, 2025. https://philopedia.com/works/the-imaginary-a-phenomenological-psychology-of-the-imagination-the-imaginary/.

BibTeX

@online{philopedia_the_imaginary_a_phenomenological_psychology_of_the_imagination_the_imaginary,
  title = {the-imaginary-a-phenomenological-psychology-of-the-imagination-the-imaginary},
  author = {Philopedia},
  year = {2025},
  url = {https://philopedia.com/works/the-imaginary-a-phenomenological-psychology-of-the-imagination-the-imaginary/},
  urldate = {December 11, 2025}
}