Mary Warnock discusses unconscious imagination in her book Imagination at the link below.

There is a recent online article on Unconscious Imagination and the Mental Imagery DebateFront Psychol. 2017; 8: 799.Published online 2017 May 23. doi:  10.3389/fpsyg.2017.00799

PMCID: PMC5440590

Berit Brogaard1,2,* and Dimitria Electra Gatzia3,4,*

Author information ► Article notes ► Copyright and License information ►

You'll find discussions of imagination in other books on the unconscious such as Unconscious Thought in Philosophy and Psychoanalysis

By John Shannon Hendrix at the Palgrave link below

You might try other search combination such as imagination in depth psychology, in psychoanalysis, etc.

https://www.ucpress.edu/book.php?isbn=9780520037243

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5440590/

http://www.palgrave.com/br/book/9781137538123

My first thought is along lines of "anything I imagine is by definition conscious." But let's assume there might be imagery operating in mental centers inaccessible to consciousness. (If so, an intriguing area to investigate - though also challenging to access!)

My next thought is that it depends on what you call "research." If you mean hard-nosed cognitive science experiments, it's quite possible that there aren't - though you might want to check in with some acknowledged experts on mental imagery, such as Stephen Kosslyn (still at Harvard, I think). But if you're willing to allow more philosophical works into the conversation, then there are several avenues worth pursuing.

The first article I'm attaching seems to do almost exactly what you want. (I think it was also linked to by Hendrika).

The second one is an example from the extensive Jungian literature. If you go digging there, you'll find a great deal about a technique called "active imagination" which is used in Jungian analysis to access unconscious material. So the imagery itself is not unconscious, but its roots are, at least in theory.

The third may be the least relevant, but stems from the mainstream psychoanalytic movement (as opposed to the Jungian splinter group) and also speaks to the interface between imagination and the unconscious. Again, maybe you can branch out from here...

Thanks so much for the help - will be checking them out today :-)

Have checked all these helpful suggestions - found that I have read them all - but my question still remains unanswered - sigh. Guess that's what PhD research is all about.

Implication: It's a high-risk area to investigate, but if you come up with a workable paradigm & a few interesting findings, your career is made.

What an encouraging reply - thank you Stephen - gives me some much-needed motivation to keep working at it :-)

C. B. Martin and Max Deutscher, “Remembering”, Philosophical Review, Vol. 75, No. 2 (April 1966), pp. 161-196, describe a kind of case where what a painter thought to be (imagined to be) an act of his imagination turns out to be more plausibly regarded as his remembering without his being conscious that he is remembering.

Not sure what you truly mean by "a connection between the unconscious and the imagination" and perhaps there´s not much "hard" research about it.

From an experiential perspective, I have repeatedly seen how my dreams point at what´s unconscious, and how many of the images conjured up are archetypal (common to others across cultural time and space). As an artist, I have also experienced how the unconscious imagery revealed by dreams and during meditative states fuels the creative process, including of course imagination.

Let´s accept imagination as our capacity to project thought independently of our immediate perception. Now, during states in which human imagination seems at its peak (REM sleep, meditative states, ecstatic and visionary states, hypnagogic states, states of reverie and daydreaming, states of revelation, highly inspired art creation, etc) there is little conscious agency—or less than in other, less imaginative states.

I can see a connection there, somewhere (it´s still vague but feels like something).

Do you ?

Thanks for your input Javi - that's exactly what I'm trying to get my head round - the connection/link/intersection between the unconscious and the imagination. 

My research has shown that imagery arising from cognitive states like day-dreaming, dreaming and meditation is usually attributed to unconscious brain activity/processing. 

I'm thinking of exploring my question through this loophole - unconscious brain activity and mental imagery arising from that process. 

Might be the approach I have been looking for.

Glad to hear and please keep me in touch. This is highly relevant to most of my passions and work. Best of luck

Thanks for all your comments. Happy to announce that I think I have finally answered my own question! My thesis has just been uploaded and chapter 5 proposes a neurophenomenological model of the artistic creative process that suggests that the imagination and the unconscious are both phenomenological concepts but are both rooted in default network mode processing. Which gives these concepts a neuroscientific foundation. Keen to hear what you all think of this. Thesis can be accessed at https://epubs.surrey.ac.uk/853441/

Usually I wince when questions from years ago crop up on my current feed - tends to be some barely relevant "reply" written in something that is barely English. This was a lovely exception! Congratulations on your successful defense, Dr. Davidson. If I can carve out a few hours I'll be interested to read your dissertation.

Thanks Stephen -- would really love to hear what you make of it.