Imago
[related: American Imago, Sigmund Freud, Anima, Dream Telepathy]
Final stage of insect metamorphosis. Also called the imaginal stage. Imago is characterized by the emergence of functional wings [1], often at the expense of great pain and suffering to the pupa. Starting in the early 20th-century the term imago appeared often in the related fields of psychoanalysis and psychology. In 1912, Sigmund Freud and his disciple Otto Rank established a periodical under the Imago moniker (later renamed American Imago in 1939) - using the term to refer to an entangled mosaic of alters, archetypes, and idealized images entrenched in the psyche [2]. The journal came to include contributions from a number of notable thinkers including Immanuel Velikovsky, and was often used as a platform for Freud's advocation of narcotics, particularly cocaine, as a veritable cure for both physical and mental disorders [3]. The publication also offered extensive documentation of Freud's foray into Dream Telepathy, the totality of which was eventually published as part of the 1953 book Psychoanalysis and the Occult. The term Imago has since found occasional use in popular culture, including a giant mutant fly-like boss with only partially functional wings in the Metroid series of games by the Nintendo Entertainment System.
- ↑ A process in which the exact mechanisms of transformation remain largely opaque to the scientific community, Jan Swammerdam's "imaginal disc" hypothesis notwithstanding. "A microscopic and sometimes even unicellular disc of imagination that somehow converts a leg to an antenna - or even, in fact, wings - in mere days? Sounds to me more magick than wisdom." - [REDACTED]
- ↑ To extend the concept, metamorphosis is then presented as healthy periodic disregarding of outdated imago and the gradual taming of anima- neurotic is a term used to refer to individuals who lack the creativity and elasticity to shed these "shells".
- ↑ A stance that was undermined by the infamous "Cocaine Episode" in which Freud's friend and patient Ernst von Fleischl-Marxow developed acute "cocaine psychosis" while self-medicating for an infection earlier acquired during a botched autopsy. Strangely, Freud saw cocaine as a cure for the (at the time much more common) addiction to morphine, reportedly contributing to cocaine's errant classification as a Schedule II Narcotic by the United States Government in 1922.