The imagination as a creative faculty has been increasingly neglected in the course of the scientific examination of the human mind. Since the 19th century, the question of how one arrives at the images seen by the inner eye has no longer been the domain of philosophy, but rather of psychology, if not psychiatry. Since that time, imagination has been understood through its involuntary manifestations, such as hallucinations, dreams, reminiscences, or wish fantasies; imagining becomes a symptom of a lack of self-possession. Sandra Janssen explores what this means for literature and demonstrates that the phantasmatic forms of imagination in modernity serve a poetic function, as narrative styles replicate states of consciousness. However, such psycho-poetics are closely linked to a changing context.