From Mental Picture to Conscious Act

This flow traces Sartre’s argument that an image is not an object stored inside the mind but a distinctive way consciousness relates to an object.

increasingBearing stren­gth in each eventdecreasing

The Reflective Starting Point

Reflection as a Starting Point The question of the image Sartre begins with the familiar experience of imagining Pierre and asks what reflection can establish about it. His method separates immediate description from hypotheses about hidden psychological mechanisms. Reflection identifies the experience as imaging without mistaking it for perception. This certainty supplies a starting point for analysis rather than a complete theory of how images arise. A change of object The inquiry therefore turns from supposed mental contents to the act by which an absent object is intended. That shift governs the book’s subsequent arguments.

The Immanence Illusion

Escaping the Inner Picture A spatial metaphor Traditional psychology treats an image as a small portrait inside consciousness, much as if the mind were a container. Sartre calls this assumption the Illusion of immanence and argues that it mistakes a relation for an inner object. The model also threatens consciousness’s unity: opaque mental pictures would interrupt the continuity of awareness rather than explain it. The object remains outside When a chair is perceived or imagined, the chair itself is the object of consciousness in either case. What changes is the way consciousness reaches it, not the chair’s location inside a mental theatre.

A Distinct Form of Consciousness

The Image as Relation A new definition Sartre concludes that an image is neither the object imagined nor a picture lodged in the mind. It names a distinctive relation between consciousness and its object. Image-directed consciousness is a complete act, not a piece that can be added to a larger mental container. It enters and leaves the stream of consciousness as a unified form. The argument’s consequence This definition makes imagination a basic activity of consciousness. The remaining inquiry asks how that activity works across pictures, words, bodily movement, dreams, and art.

Opening methodological chapter

Early in Part I, Chapter 1

At the close of the opening description