Many treatments for anxiety utilize associative learning theory and involve mental imagery components. However, the roles associative learning and imagery play in anxiety disorders and their treatments are still largely unknown. Here we show that voluntary mental imagery can undergo associative learning in the same manner as normal sensory perception. After conditioning voluntary mental images with emotion-evoking stimuli, perceptual stimuli of the same content were found to produce the associated emotional response—indicating generalization from imagery to perception. This associative learning with imagery was found to be orientation selective and could not be accounted for by alternative, non-imagery-based interpretations of the data. These results support pictorial theories of mental imagery by indicating the interchangeability of imagery and perception in associative learning and demonstrate that voluntary mental images can drive associative learning, providing a mechanistic account of clinical practice involving mental imagery.