Abstract

Imaginal psychology, named for its orientation to the image, espouses seeing through the image to its meaningful depth. The interest of this study is a particular aspect of the image which eludes seeing, or seeing through. It is the mobility of images. Mobility gives the image its life and significance; but movement, in isolation, apart from form, cannot be apprehended directly; and so, we shall approach it indirectly by means of metaphor. ;Our metaphorical device in this case is nearly as elusive as mobility, it is postmodernism. Postmodernism is metaphorical by nature. Considered variously as discourse, style, or critique, it offers itself only to interpretation and is capable only of interpretation. ;Here the postmodern discourse is read as mythology. Particular attention goes to those ideas within its discourse that offer us some meaningful connection to the nature of mobility. Ironically, the ideas that connect are precisely those that disconnect. The notion of disengagement, as elaborated by Joseph Campbell, offers us a meaningful way to read symbols. Postmodernism reads the world as symbol, by means of disengagement, thus its resemblance to mobility. ;Throughout the study, postmodernism is related to modernism as its complement: both are considered as essential and mutually dependent ways of thinking. It may be helpful to think of modernism as the reason of logos, and that postmodernism is the reason of mythos. Corresponding to these two styles of thinking, the writing style of this study mimics its subject by being both factual and fictional. Whereas most of the study is analytical and rational in style and in tone, there is an irrational, or, more accurately, a fictional voice that enters the text spontaneously. The final chapter is almost entirely in the fictional voice, repeating many of the points by earlier by the factual through the use of imagery, dreams, dialogue and poetry-to suggest that what is factual in our minds is indeed fiction