Hunger of Imagination (Samuel Johnson)

Solitude makes it possible for us to gain access to our most inner reality. Through solitude we find the ability to sort out the structure of our thoughts, to gain access to the meaning of our ideas and attitudes. Solitude provides access to our imagination.

Imagination and reason are the faculties of mind that sets our species off from our nearest non-human species. It is imagination that provides man with the flexibility to adjust to a changing environment but it is imagination that also robs man of contentment.

Our non-human ancestors are guided by instinct alone. Instinct is the impulse that determines the behavior in a pre-programmed response. But our species has added to this survival response system the faculty of reason, which allows us to fit into a changing environment for survival. Reason and imagination determines the destiny of the species. Discontentment bred by imagination and motivates man to seek a different way and reason facilitates the change by offering the options for change. The discontent of imagination is the catalyst for adaptation.

The product of imagination is fantasy. Fantasy can provide an escape from reality or as is evident in our accomplishments of science and the arts it provides the ingredients for new ideas, which like the theories of Newton and Einstein establish the paradigms for technology.

Freud wrote, in his paper "Creative Writers and Day-Dreaming" "We may lay it down that a happy person never phantasies, only an unsatisfied one. The motive forces of phantasies are unsatisfied wishes, and every single phantasy is the fulfillment of a wish, a correction of an unsatisfied reality."

Freud considered fantasize was a \n escapist practice, a turning away from reality rather than a confrontation with reality in attempted change. He considered fantasy as a derivative of play and that the child as growing older turned from fantasy focused upon an object was able to replace the object with castles in the air, with daydreams. Freud theorized that the pleasure principle was replaced by the reality principle.

Present day psychology considers that fantasy is part of our biological endowment and that the discrepancy between our innerworld and our outer world compels man to become inventive thereby leading to imagination. Imagination is the attempt to bridge the inner world and the outer world of man.

Goya wrote "Phantasy abandoned by reason produces impossible monsters; united with her, she is the mother of the arts and the origin of their marvels."

There are two kind of fantasies those that reach out to the world and are found non congruent and those congruent it is the difference between the tqo that leads to imagination.

Creative apperception demands the conjunction of the subjective and the objective. "It is creative apperception more than anything else that makes the individual feel that life is worth living." Page 71 Solitude

When play is deserted because so much importance is placed upon the endeavor joy goes with it. There is an element of play in innovation. If we consider the outer world as something that we can only adapt to then we lose a sense of possible fulfillment individuality disappears and one despairs of a life that seems to be meaningless and futile.

Fantasy leads to imagination, which leads to a meaningful life.

Hobbies are ways in which many individuals express their individuality. Those matters that excite an individual interest and curiosity are those very things that allow the individual him or her to self-understanding and also for others to understand them. Interests define individuality and help to provide meaning to life. We all look for some ideology, philosophy or religion to provide meaning to life.

When examining psychosis the psychiatrist advises either the establishment of an interpersonal evolvement or for finding interests and perhaps new patterns of thought. Many of us find that our work provides that means for identity and personal fulfillment.

None of us have discovered our full potentialities or have fully explored in depth those we have discovered. Self-development and self-expression are relatively new ideas in human history. The arts are one means for this self-expression. The artist may find drawing or constructing sculptures as a means for self-discovery. The self-learner may find essay writing of equal importance. Consciousness of individuality was first become a possibility in the Middle Ages. The renaissance and further the Reformation enhanced the development of individual identification.

As technology developed there grew a further enhancement of the perception of the individual. It was in the Oxford English Dictionary in 1674 that the word "self" took on the present modern meaning of "a permanent subject of successive and varying states of consciousness". "Self" as an instance of compounds with other words appeared over this period of time. Self-knowledge (1613), self-examination (1647). Self-interest (1649).

The word "individual" moved from the indivisible and collective to the divisible and distinctive. In this we see the development of an understanding of self-consciousness thus illustrating the dramatic change taking place in our developing understanding of the self as a distinct subject not just a cipher in a community. This was part of the Renaissance.