James Hillman
James Hillman | |
---|---|
Born | April 12, 1926 Atlantic City, New Jersey, United States |
Died | October 27, 2011 Thompson, Connecticut, United States | (aged 85)
Nationality | American |
Occupation | Psychologist |
Years active | 1965–2006 |
James Hillman (April 12, 1926 – October 27, 2011) was an American
Early life and education
Hillman was born in
Career
In 1970, Hillman became editor of
Hillman was married three times, lastly to Margot McLean-Hillman, who survived him. He has four children from his first marriage. He died at his home in Thompson, Connecticut, in 2011, from bone cancer.[1]
Archetypal psychology
Archetypal psychology is a
Whereas Jung’s psychology focused on the Self, its dynamics and its constellations (
In Re-Visioning Psychology (1975) Hillman 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
– and with even more branches yet to be traced. (p. xvii)
The development of archetypal psychology is influenced by
Hillman in turn influenced a number of younger Jungian analysts and colleagues, among the most well known being the popular author Thomas Moore (spiritual writer) and Jungian analyst Stanton Marlan. Some of the early history of this influence is traced in Marlan's Archetypal Psychologies.[8]
Psyche or soul
Hillman has been critical of the 20th century’s psychologies (e.g.,
Archetypal Psychology: A Brief Account (2006) was written in 1981 as a chapter in the Enciclopedia del Novecento in Italy and published by Hillman in 1983 as a basic introduction to his mythic psychology. It summarizes the major themes set out in his earlier, more comprehensive work, Re-Visioning Psychology (1975). The poetic basis of mind places psychological activities in the realm of images. It seeks to explore images rather than explain them. Within this is the idea that by re-working images, that is giving them attention and shaping and forming them until they are clear as possible then a therapeutic process which Hillman calls "soul making" takes place. Hillman equates the psyche with the soul and seeks to set out a psychology based without shame in art and culture. The goal is to draw soul into the world via the creative acts of the individual, not to exclude it in the name of social order. The potential for soulmaking is revealed by psychic images to which a person is drawn and apprehends in a meaningful way. Indeed, the act of being drawn to and looking deeper at the images presented creates meaning – that is, soul. Further to Hillman's project is a sense of the dream as the basic model of the psyche. This is set out more fully in The Dream and the Underworld (1979). In this text Hillman suggests that dreams show us as we are; diverse, taking very different roles, experiencing fragments of meaning that are always on the tip of consciousness. They also place us inside images, rather than placing images inside us. This move turns traditional epistemology on its head. The source of knowing is not Descartes' "I" but, rather, there is a world full of images that this 'I' inhabits. Hillman further suggests a new understanding of psychopathology. He stresses the importance of psychopathology to the human experience and replaces a medical understanding with a poetic one. In this idea, sickness is a vital part of the way the soul of a person, that illusive and subjective phenomenon, becomes known.
Dream analysis
Because archetypal psychology is concerned with fantasy, myth, and image, dreams are considered to be significant in relation to soul and soul-making. 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, as did Jung. Rather, “dreams tell us where we are, not what to do” (1979). Therefore, Hillman is against the 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 famous dictum with regard to dream content and process is “Stick with the image.”
For example, Hillman (1983a) discusses a patient's dream about a huge black snake. The dream work would include "keeping the snake" and describing it rather than making it something other than a snake. Hillman notes:
the moment you've defined the snake, interpreted it, you've lost the snake, you've stopped it and the person leaves the hour with a concept about my repressed sexuality or my cold black passions ... and you've lost the snake. The task of analysis is to keep the snake there, the black snake...see, the black snake's no longer necessary the moment it's been interpreted, and you don't need your dreams any more because they've been interpreted.[9]
One would inquire more about the snake as it is presented in the dream by the psyche so to draw it forth from its lair in the unconscious. The snake is huge and black, but what else? Is it molting or shedding its skin? Is it sunning itself on a rock? Is it digesting its prey? This descriptive strategy keeps the image alive, in Hillman's opinion, and offers the possibility for understanding the psyche.
The Soul's Code
Hillman's 1997 book, The Soul's Code: In Search of Character and Calling, outlines what he calls the "acorn theory" of the soul. This theory states that all people already hold the potential for the unique possibilities inside themselves, much as an acorn holds the pattern for an oak tree. The book describes how a unique, individual energy of the soul is contained within each human being, displayed throughout their lifetime and shown in their calling and life's work when it is fully actualized.
Hillman argues against the "
Hillman suggests a reappraisal for each individual of their own childhood and present life to try to find their particular calling, the seed of their own acorn. He has written that he is to help precipitate a re-souling of the world in the space between rationality and psychology. He complements the notion of growing up, with the notion of growing down, or 'rooting in the earth' and becoming grounded, in order for the individual to further grow. Hillman incorporates logic and rational thought, as well as reference to case histories of well known people in society, whose daimons are considered to be clearly displayed and actualized, in the discussion of the daimon. His arguments are also considered to be in line with the
Criticism
From a classical Jungian perspective, Hillman's Archetypal Psychology is a contrarian school of thought, since he has discarded the essentials of Jungian psychology. The term “archetypal” gives the impression that his school is based on Jung's understanding of the archetype. Yet, Walter Odajnyk argues that Hillman should have called his school “imaginal” psychology, since it is really based on Hillman's understanding of the imagination.[12] Hillman has also rejected individuation, central to Jungian psychology. Wolfgang Giegerich argues that Hillman's work exists in a “bubble of irreality” outside time. It's a form of “static Platonism” impervious to developmental change.[13] In Hillman's psychology, the “immunisation of the imaginal from the historical process has become inherent in its very form.”[14]
Hillman considers his work as an expression of the “puer aeternus”, the eternal youth of fairy tale who lives in an eternal dream-state, resistant to growing up. Yet, David Tacey maintains that denial of the maturational impulse will only lead to it happening anyway but in a negative form. He holds that Hillman's model was “unmade” by the missing developmental element of his thought: “By throwing out the heroic pattern of consciousness, and the idea of individuation, Hillman no longer appealed to most psychologists or therapists. By transgressing professional ethics, he no longer appealed to training institutes.”[15]
Marie-Louise von Franz regards identification with the puer aeternus as a neurosis belonging to the narcissistic spectrum.[16] Against this, Hillman has argued that the puer is not under the sway of a mother complex but that it is best seen in relation to the senex or father archetype. However, Tacey says that the puer cannot be dissociated from the mother by intellectual reconfiguration. “If these figures are archetypally bound, why would intellectual trickery separate them?” The wrenching of the puer from the mother to the father is “a display of intellectual deceit, for a self-serving purpose.”[17]
Bibliography
- A Blue Fire - Selected Writings By James Hillman, Harper-perennial; Later Printing edition (2010)
- City and Soul, Uniform Edition, Vol. 2 (Spring Publications, 2006)
- Senex and Puer, Uniform Edition, Vol. 3 (Spring Publications, 2006)
- Archetypal Psychology, Uniform Edition, Vol. 1 (Spring Publications, 2004. Original 1983.)
- A Terrible Love of War, (2004)
- The Force of Character, (Random House, New York, 1999)
- The Soul's Code: In Search of Character and Calling, (1997)
- Dream Animals, (with Margot McLean). (Chronicle Books, 1997)
- Kinds of Power: A Guide to its Intelligent Uses, (1995)
- Healing Fiction, (Spring Publications, 1994. Original 1983.)
- We've Had a Hundred Years of Psychotherapy – And the World's Getting Worse (with Michael Ventura), (1993)
- The Thought of the Heart and the Soul of the World, (1992)
- A Blue Fire: Selected Writings of James Hillman, introduced and edited by Thomas Moore, (1989)
- Anima: An Anatomy of a Personified Notion, (1985)
- Inter Views (with Laura Pozzo), (1983a)
- The Myth of Analysis: Three Essays in Archetypal Psychology, (1983b)
- The Dream and the Underworld, (1979)
- Re-Visioning Psychology, (1975)
- Loose Ends: Primary Papers in Archetypal Psychology, (1975a)
- Pan and the Nightmare, (1972)
- Insearch:psychology and religion, (1967)
- Suicide and the Soul, (1964)
- Emotion; a comprehensive phenomenology of theories and their meanings for therapy, (1961)
See also
- Wolfgang Giegerich
- Imaginal psychology
- Stanton Marlan
References
- ^ a b c d e f "James Hillman, Therapist in Men’s Movement, Dies at 85" New York Times October 27, 2011
- ^ Emily Yoffe, "How the Soul is Sold, The New York Times, 23 April 1995.
- ^ http://www.independent.ie/obituaries/james-hillman-2927117.html James Hillman - Obituary - Irish Independent - 2011
- ^ Russell, Dick (2013). The Life and Ideas of James Hillman: Volume I: The Making of a Psychologist. Skyhorse Publications.
- ^ a b Hillman, J. 'Who Was Zwingli?', SPRING Journal 56, p.5 (1994) Spring Publications
- ISBN 0-06-092101-3.
- ^ Robbins, Brent Dean. "James Hillman". mythosandlogos.com. Retrieved 2018-01-23.
- ^ Marlan, S. (ed.) (2008) Archetypal Psychologies: Reflections in honor of James Hillman. New Orleans: Spring Journal Books.
- ^ (p. 54)
- ISBN 0-446-67371-4.
- ISBN 0-446-67371-4.
- ^ Odajnyk, V.W. (1984). “The Psychologist as artist: the imaginal world of James Hillman”. Quadrant: A Jungian Quarterly, vol. 17, no. 1, pp. 39–48.
- ^ Giegerich, W. (1993). “Hillmania! A Festival of Archetypal Psychology”. The Round Table Review, vol. 1, no. 1, pp. 10-11.
- ^ Giegerich, W. (2008). “The Unassimilable Remnant—What Is at Stake?: A Dispute with Stanton Marlan” in Archetypal Psychologies, ed. by S. Marlan. New Orleans: Spring Journal Books, p. 197.
- ^ Tacey, D. (2014). “James Hillman: The Unmaking of a Psychologist. Part One: His Legacy'. Journal of Analytical Psychology. Volume 59, Issue 4, pp. 467–485.
- ^ Franz, M.-L. von (2000). The Problem of the Puer Aeternus. Inner City Books, pp. 65, 148, 231.
- ^ Tacey, D. (2014). “James Hillman: The Unmaking of a Psychologist. Part Two: The Problem of the Puer”. Journal of Analytical Psychology, vol. 59, no. 4, pp. 486–502.