But we tend to ascribe emotions, traits, and beliefs to these irreal objects as if they were real.

Throughout the book Sartre offers arguments against conceiving images as something inside a spatial consciousness.

Sartre says that what is required for the imaginary process to occur is an analogon—that is, an equivalent of perception.

This can be a painting, a photograph, a sketch, or even the mental image we conjure when we think of someone or something.

Ultimately, Sartre argues that because we can imagine, we are ontologically free.

In order to imagine, a consciousness must be able to posit an object as irreal—nonexistent, absent, somewhere else and it does so always from a particular point of view.