Psychemagination: Healing the Inner Child is Out Now.
Ah the excitement of holding your latest book in your hand. No matter how many books you’ve published, it’s always a great day – unless, of course, you open the book and find a typo glaring at you! Luckily this wasn’t the case, though with this many pictures, the print job could have been an issue. It wasn’t. I’m very pleased with it.
The Story Behind the Book
Occasionally I used to explode with rage and had no idea why—until I met the small, stubborn voice inside me. With the help of a psychologist, I realised my sudden outbursts weren’t random. They were echoes—low‑grade trauma lodged in a younger self who had never been seen. For decades I ignored that small presence. I thought I was simply ‘too sensitive’ or ‘overreactive’. It wasn’t until I sat down and invited her to speak that the pattern revealed itself. She told me what had happened. I used imagination to go back, to stand between the past and the child, to protect her in the way she needed. The memory shifted. The charge eased. The rage that had surprised me for years began to dissolve.
This book is the map of that work. It’s not therapy in a clinical sense, but it is practical and grounded: guided active imagination exercises, compassionate prompts, and clear ways to hold the inner child safely. If you’ve ever wondered why small things trigger big reactions, or if you want to reclaim the vitality and playfulness you lost along the way, this book offers a way in. Read it as a stand‑alone guide, or pair it with Into the Underworld for a deeper symbolic context.
But why, you might wonder, publish a book like this at all?
The book is both personal and collective in scope, but you may wonder why I would share the personal aspect. Carl Jung, referring to active imagination, said:
“I should advise you to put it all down as beautifully as you can in some beautifully bound book. It will seem as if you were making the visions banal, but then you need to do that. Then you are freed from the power of them. If you do that with these eyes, for instance, they will cease to draw you. You should never try to make the visions come again. Think of it in your imagination and try to paint it. Then when these things are in some precious book, you can go to the book and turn over the pages, and for you, it will be your church, your cathedral, the silent places of your spirit where you will find renewal. If anyone tells you that it is morbid or neurotic and you listen to them, then you will lose your soul, for in that book is your soul.” Carl Jung, from the introduction to the The Red Book: A Reader’s Edition by C.G. Jung, edited by Sonu Shamdasani
Jung put his active imaginations and the artwork they inspired into what is commonly called his Red Book. The Psychemagination Series fulfills the same function for me, and just as many people find Jung’s Red Book illuminating, they may also enjoy the tales of my inner journeys.
In addition to that, if the book inspires just one person to begin the journey of looking for and talking to their inner child, it will have been worth it, because I’m pretty sure that anyone who engages with their inner child this way will find it beneficial.
For more on the inner child, see tomorrow’s article on the inner child – what it is and why we need to work with it.
