The purpose of this paper is to explore the relationship between the theory of imagination and ideology in the work of Paul Ricceur. The imagination can be classified from two perspectives, first from the perspective of the imagined object, linking the imagination to what is present or absent. This refers to the present representation of an absent thing. The other related to the problem of the subject, shown how imagination produces confusion between the imaginary and the real. But the representation of reality through the imagination can be distorted. Ricceur regard poses a semantic analysis of three levels of ideology: distortion, justification and integration. This analysis allowed to criticize the illusions of collective representations of social groups. The central hypothesis here is that the study of imagination on the collective level, shows how is originate the false representations of social imaginary.