For imaginal psychologists, the discrepancy between image and outer object is simply an ineliminable fact of human existence. Hillman considers the purpose of analysis to be the 'relativization' of the ego by the imagination. In this respect, imaginal psychology is most definitely not an ego psychology. Waters in dreams or in active imagination may be as different as rivers are from puddles. The descriptive qualities that they exhibit are so incredibly diverse as to be potentially infinite - as are the metaphorical implications.
Imaginal psychologists believe that the personality is fundamentally multiple, rather than unitary.
In a sense, there is no personality - only personifications, which, when analysts regard them as if they were real persons, assume the status of autonomous personalities. He criticizes fundamentalist Christianity in particular, for it has been most puritanical and iconoclastic. Because fundamentalism has regarded the image literally rather than metaphorically, it has condemned all imagism as idolatry. Mythology Historically, analysis has had a special interest in mythology. Freud regards the complex as primary, the myth as secondary.