… In the Strasberg Method, the emphasis is obviously more on the actor's own life experiences, the 'real' ones, and how to retrieve them and use them to create real experience again, now, on the stage. Even though Strasberg himself had a different definition for what ‘imagination’ is, the element which you, and most people, are referring to seems a bit lacking in his Method. That's one of the criticisms people like Stella Adler had in regards to it, and indeed she went on to emphasize and develop the use of the 'imagination' as the main tool of the actor.

From my own personal experience (having studied at both schools), I find the combination of the two - Sense Memory and imagination - to work the best... I make them inseparable in my mind, so that the things that did happen to me mix with the things I only imagine, and thus the one triggers the other and they both work to create some sense of a real experience in me, now, on the stage.