This study examines how crime scene analysts, or criminal profilers, tacitly apply a synthesis of Jungian interpretations of active imagination and countertransference. This work clarifies this construct, countertransferential active imagination or imaginal work, through the archetypalist concept of image. For its data, the study presents two distinct bodies of literature. The first is an extensive review of Jungian writings and subsequent archetypalist formulations. The second source of literature is the autobiographical texts by two criminal profilers, John Douglas and Robert Ressler.

This study examines how crime scene analysts, or criminal profilers, tacitly apply a synthesis of Jungian interpretations of active imagination and co...