Archetypal psychology
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Archetypal psychology was initiated as a distinct movement in the early 1970s by James Hillman, a psychologist who trained in analytical psychology and became the first Director of the Jung Institute in Zürich. Hillman reports that archetypal psychology emerged partly from the Jungian tradition whilst drawing also from other traditions and authorities such as Henry Corbin, Giambattista Vico, and Plotinus.
Archetypal psychology relativizes and deliteralizes the notion of ego and focuses on what it calls the psyche, or soul, and the deepest patterns of psychic functioning, "the fundamental fantasies that animate all life" (Moore, in Hillman, 1991). Archetypal psychology likens itself to a polytheistic mythology in that it attempts to recognize the myriad fantasies and
Influences
The main influence on the development of archetypal psychology is
C. G. Jung
Henry Corbin
Edward Casey
Edward S. Casey is attributed with distinguishing archetypal psychology from other theories by explaining an image as a way of seeing rather than something seen. According to Casey, an image is only perceived by imagining because an image is not what one sees but the way one sees. He also states that imagination is an activity of soul and not just a human faculty. An image appears to be more profound, more powerful, and more beautiful than the comprehension of it. This explains the drive behind the arts which provide disciplines that can actualize the complexity of the image.[1]
James Hillman
Hillman (1975) sketches a brief lineage of archetypal psychology.
- By calling upon Jung to begin with, I am partly acknowledging the fundamental debt that archetypal psychology owes him. He is the immediate ancestor in a long line that stretches back through Freud, – and with even more branches yet to be traced (p. xvii).
Polytheistic psychology
- The power of myth, its reality, resides precisely in its power to seize and influence psychic life. The Greeks knew this so well, and so they had no depth psychology and psychopathology such as we have. They had myths. And we have no myths – instead, depth psychology and psychopathology. Therefore... psychology shows myths in modern dress and myths show our depth psychology in ancient dress."[4]
Hillman qualifies his many references to gods as differing from a literalistic approach saying that for him they are aides memoires, i.e. sounding boards employed "for echoing life today or as bass chords giving resonance to the little melodies of life."[5] Hillman further insists that he does not view the pantheon of gods as a 'master matrix' against which we should measure today and thereby decry modern loss of richness.[5]
Psyche or soul
Hillman says he has been critical of the 20th century's psychologies (e.g.,
Hillman has his own definition of soul. Primarily, he notes that soul is not a "thing", not an entity. Nor is it something that is located "inside" a person. Rather, soul is "a perspective rather than a substance, a viewpoint towards things... (it is) reflective; it mediates events and makes differences..."(1975). Soul is not to be located in the brain or in the head, for example (where most modern psychologies place it), but human beings are in psyche. The world, in turn, is the
Additionally, Hillman (1975) says he observes that soul:
- refers to the deepening of events into experiences; second the significance of soul makes possible, whether in love or religious concern, derives from its special relationship with death. And third, by 'soul' I mean the imaginative possibility in our natures, the experiencing through reflective speculation, dream, image, fantasy—that mode which recognizes all realities as primarily symbolic or metaphorical.
The notion of soul as imaginative possibility, in relation to the archai or root metaphors, is what Hillman has termed the "poetic basis of mind".
Dream analysis
Because Hillman's archetypal psychology is concerned with fantasy, myth, and image, dreams are considered to be significant in relation to the soul. Hillman does not believe that dreams are simply random residue or flotsam from waking life (as advanced by physiologists), but neither does he believe that dreams are compensatory for the struggles of waking life, or are invested with "secret" meanings of how one should live (à la Jung). Rather, "dreams tell us where we are, not what to do" (1979). Therefore, Hillman is against the 20th century traditional interpretive methods of dream analysis. Hillman's approach is phenomenological rather than analytic (which breaks the dream down into its constituent parts) and interpretive/hermeneutic (which may make a dream image "something other" than what it appears to be in the dream). His dictum with regard to dream content and process is "Stick with the image."
Hillman (1983) describes his position succinctly:
- For instance, a black snake comes in a dream, a great big black snake, and you can spend a whole hour with this black snake talking about the devouring mother, talking about anxiety, talking about the repressed sexuality, talking about the natural mind, all those interpretive moves that people make, and what is left, what is vitally important, is what this snake is doing, this crawling huge black snake that's walking into your life... and the moment you've defined the snake, you've interpreted it, you've lost the snake, you've stopped it.... The task of analysis is to keep the snake there....
The snake in the dream does not become something else: it is none of the things Hillman mentioned, and neither is it a penis, as Hillman says Freud might have maintained, nor the serpent from the Garden of Eden, as Hillman thinks Jung might have mentioned. It is not something someone can look up in a dream dictionary; its meaning has not been given in advance. Rather, the black snake is the black snake. Approaching the dream snake phenomenologically simply means describing the snake and attending to how the snake appears as a snake in the dream. It is a huge black snake, that is given. But are there other snakes in the dream? If so, is it bigger than the other snakes? Smaller? Is it a black snake among green snakes? Or is it alone? What is the setting, a desert or a rain forest? Is the snake getting ready to feed? Shedding its skin? Sunning itself on a rock? All of these questions are elicited from the primary image of the snake in the dream, and as such can be rich material revealing the psychological life of the dreamer and the life of the psyche spoken through the dream.
The Soul's Code
Hillman's 1996 book, The Soul's Code: In Search of Character and Calling, outlines an "acorn theory of the soul".
Hillman diverges from Jung and his idea of the Self. Hillman sees Jung as too prescriptive and argues against the idea of life-maps by which to try to grow properly.
Instead, Hillman suggests a reappraisal of each individual's childhood and present life to try to find the individual's particular calling, the acorn of the soul. He has written that he is the one to help precipitate a re-souling of the world in the space between rationality and psychology. He replaces the notion of growing up, with the myth of growing down from the
Psychopathology and therapy
Psychopathology is viewed as the psyche's independent ability to create morbidity, disorder, illness, abnormality and suffering in any part of its behavior and to imagine and experience life through a deformed perspective.[7]
Archetypal psychology follows the following procedures for therapy:
- Regular meetings
- Face-to-face
- The therapist chooses the location
- A fee is charged
These procedures may be modified depending on the therapist and the client. In therapy both the therapist and client explore the client's habitual behavior, feelings, fantasies, dreams, memories, and ideas. The goal of therapy is the improvement of the client and termination of treatment.[8] Goals are not stated for therapy.[1]
Influence
Hillman's archetypal or imaginal psychology influenced a number of younger analysts and colleagues, among the most well known being Thomas Moore (spiritual writer) and Jungian analyst Stanton Marlan. A brief history of the early influence of Hillman and of archetypal/imaginal psychology can be found in Marlan's Archetypal Psychologies.[9]
Criticism
See also
References
- ^ a b c d e Hillman, J. (1985). Archetypal psychology a brief account. Dallas, TX: Spring Publications
- ISBN 0-06-092101-3.
- ISBN 0-06-092101-3.
- ^ Hillman, J. (1990) Oedipus Variations: Studies in Literature and Psychoanalysis. Spring p.90
- ^ a b SPRING Journal 56, p.5 (1994) Spring Publications
- ^ Birkerts, Sven (15 September 1996). "From Little Acorns...: The Soul's Code: In Search of Character and Calling. By James Hillman". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 1 June 2021.
- ^ Hillman, James. Re-Visioning Psychology. New York: Harper & Row, 1975 [Harper Colophon edition, 1977].
- ^ Hillman, James. Loose Ends: Primary Papers in Archetypal Psychology. New York/Zürich: Spring Publications, 1975.
- ^ Marlan, S. (ed.) (2008) Archetypal Psychologies: Reflections in honor of James Hillman. New Orleans: Spring Journal Books.
Select bibliography
- Hillman, James (2004). A Terrible Love of War. Penguin. ISBN 1-59420-011-4.
- Hillman, James (1999). The Force of Character. Random House. ISBN 0-375-50120-7.
- Hillman, James (1998). The Myth of Analysis: Three Essays in Archetypal Psychology. Northwestern University Press. ISBN 0-8101-1651-0.
- Hillman, James (1997). The Soul's Code: On Character and Calling. Random House. ISBN 0-446-67371-4.
- Hillman, James (1995). Kinds of Power: A Guide to its Intelligent Uses. Currency Doubleday. ISBN 0-385-48967-6.
- Hillman, James (1983). Healing Fiction. Station Hill Press. ISBN 0-930794-55-9.
- Hillman, James; ISBN 0-06-250661-7.
- Hillman, James (1992). The Thought the Heart and the Soul of the World. Spring Publications. ISBN 0-88214-353-0.
- Hillman, James (1997). Archetypal Psychology: A Brief Account. Spring Publications. ISBN 0-88214-373-5.
- Hillman, James; Carl Gustav Jung (1985). Anima: An Anatomy of a Personified Notion. ISBN 0-88214-316-6.
- Inter Views (with Laura Pozzo), 1983
- ISBN 0-06-090682-0.
- ISBN 0-88214-308-5.
- Hillman, James (1975). Re-Visioning Psychology (based on his Yale University Terry Lectures).
Other writers
- ISBN 0-940262-28-2.
- ISBN 0-88214-365-4.
- Dennis, Sandra Lee (2001). Embrace of the Daimon. Nicolas-Hays. ISBN 0-89254-056-7.
- Paris, Ginnette (1990). Pagan Grace: Dionysos, Hermes, and Goddess Memory in Daily Life. Spring Publications. ISBN 0-88214-342-5.
- Paris, Ginnette (1986). Pagan Meditations: The Worlds of Aphrodite, Artemis, and Hestia. Spring Publications. ISBN 0-88214-330-1.
- The Power of Soul, Robert Sardello
- Ziegler, Alfred (2000). Archetypal Madicine. Spring Publications. ISBN 0-88214-374-3.
- ISBN 0-8091-3599-X.
- ISBN 1-882670-93-0.
- Hells and Holy Ghosts, David L. Miller
- Echo's Subtle Body, Patricia Berry 1982
- The Soul in Grief, Robert Romanyshyn
- Technology as Symptom and Dream, Robert Romanyshyn, 1989
- Mirror and Metaphor: Images and Stories of Psychological Life, Robert Romanyshyn, 2001
- Waking Dreams, Mary Watkins
- The Alchemy of Discourse, Paul Kugler
- Words As Eggs: Psyche in Language and Clinic, by Russell Arthur Lockhart
- The Moon and The Virgin, Nor Hall
- The Academy of the Dead, Stephen Simmer
- Svet Zhizni (Light of Life) (in Russian), Alexander Zelitchenko, 2006
- Samuels, A. (1995). Jung and the Post-Jungians. London: Routledge.
- Daniels, Aaron (2011). Imaginal Reality, Volume 1: Journey to the Voids. Aeon Books. ISBN 978-1-90465-849-8.
- Daniels, Aaron (2011). Imaginal Reality, Volume 2: Voidcraft. Aeon Books. ISBN 978-1-90465-856-6.
External links
- The Archetypal Mind
- Spring Publications website
- Brent Dean Robbins' James Hillman webpage
- International Association for Jungian Studies
- Jungian Archetypes
- Pacifica Graduate Institute – Graduate school offering programs in Jungian and post-Jungian studies
- [1] – A journal for Archetypal studies and the arts