While the prayer of imagination undoubtedly has connections with some of the insights of modern psychology (especially Jung's 'active imagination'), it is worth stressing that it has a long history in christian tradition. The medium through which gospel contemplation has come through to our own times is the Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius Loyola. 5 Until serious research into ignatian texts and other sources became more widespread and systematic in modern times,

imagination was associated with a rather rigid and dry form of mental prayer or 'meditation' which involved, above all, the reason and will-power and which, it was believed, was the only authentic ignatian prayer. It is now appreciated much more widely that Ignatius did not promote any one method of prayer. The Exercises contain at least ten different ones! Further, it is now appreciated that the form of imaginative prayer which Ignatius recommends at the beginning of the Second Week or stage of the Exercises is really a form of contemplative prayer, rather than discursive meditation. 

This view is reinforced if we bear in mind its origins in the medieval monastic tradition lectio divina. In his teaching on prayer Ignatius is thoroughly eclectic and derivative. His originality lay in adapting and simplifying the riches of christian prayer in order to make them accessible beyond the confines of the cloister, and in weaving the various methods into a wider framework, the Exercises, which was conceived of as a context to enable a person to reach such an inner freedom that he or she could respond wholeheartedly to the call of Christ in everyday life. 

ÀÚ·áÃâó Philip Sheldrake, "IMAGINATION AND PRAYER," p. 97.