«I am a scholar of scientific, humanistic, ludic and artistic aspects of imagination, imagery and creativity. My research field is fantasiology (or phantasiology). I have been working professionally for fifteen years on imagination, imagery and creativity. Being a fantasiologist is my full time job. I work with universities, schools, associations, training institutes, bookshops, libraries, prisons, museums....Among the tasks of the fantasiologist there is one that most stimulates me and, at the same time, torments me: that of making known that imagination and imagery are not activities related to the escape from reality (that is "reverie") but faculties with historical and scientific characteristics that must be studied if we want to understand these faculties and their way of becoming concrete in the reality in which we live. Unfortunately, many people improvise on these topics but you cannot talk about imagination, imagery and creativity only from opinion or personal experience or because you have read this or that book on the subject. There is an interdisciplinary study to deal with, technical information to untangle and that of imagination is a complex and contradictory study that begins in the fifth century BCE.» Massimo Gerardo Carrese



What is imagination?*
(Italian)
by Massimo Gerardo Carrese

Imagination is a faculty of the mind that we all possess. In the past, especially in the Middle Ages, late Nineteenth and early Twentieth centuries, it was considered to be a skill of few people, exclusive of those who were considered to be genius or talented people, for example artists, poets, musicians, writers. Imagination was thought to be a skill of mostly male individuals. Today it is thought that imagination is certainly a capacity present in all people, who possess it in different measure and with different stimuli. Is this difference a discrimination? Quite the contrary. We are different because each of us is unique.

Imagination is an ambiguous word that reveals different expressions of people and cultures. Depending on the contexts to which it refers to, it has different meanings. [...]


To learn more read here

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* This article has been rewritten and shortened. It was originally published in the Italian Magazine "Soci@lmente" n.5, March 2012, 7-8 and on the website of the Società Dante Alighieri di Katowice, "Learning the language by playing", June 2012. To learn more about other publications see "I Saggi" by Ngurzu Edizioni

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