Tag Archives: Thomas Moore

What would James Hillman say about all this?

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James Hillman (1926-2011)

James Hillman, a genius in the field of psychology, is largely unknown to the general public. Only one of his many books, The Soul’s Code (1997), is widely known, and only because Oprah featured it. Hillman’s long time friend and editor, Thomas Moore, wrote a tribute and summary of his life after his death in October, 2011. Moore said, “Jame’s books and essays, in my view, represent the best and most original thought of our times. I expect that it will take many decades before he is truly discovered and appreciated.”

Hillman, who was, for a time, director of the Jung Institute in Zurich, founded “Archetypal Psychology,” an extension of Jung’s thought, centered on the poetic, imaginal basis of psyche or soul: “Every notion in our minds, each perception of the world and sensation in ourselves must go through a psychic organization in order to ‘happen’ at all. Every single feeling or observation occurs as a psychic event by first forming a fantasy-image.”

He criticized most 20th century psychologies as materialistic and literal, giving no space to soul. With journalist, Michael Ventura, he co-authored We’ve Had a Hundred Years of Psychotherapy and the World Is Getting Worse (1992). He was vehement in his condemnation of the exclusive “inward” bent of most psychotherapies, which deprive the world of our outrage and our energy. He gave the example of a man who works eight or ten hours a day at a meaningless job, at an ugly, uncomfortable desk, under flickering florescent lights. When he goes to a therapist for relief from depression, he’s likely to be asked how he got along with his mother… Continue reading →

Remembering James Hillman

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James Hillman died two years ago today.  As a culture, we have yet to appreciate the depth and range of his thought, but without any doubt, that will come.  I’m going to post a brief interview with him that I just discovered.

Toward the end of his life, Hillman wrote extensively on character, in The Soul’s Code, 1996, and The Force of Character, 1999.  In this 1999 interview on the Legacy of Aging, he said true character emerges most clearly in maturity.

When our culture attempts to mask the process, through plastic surgery and other means, we deprive ourselves, and especially the young, of the authenticity of elders, people who simply are what they are.  “As Hemingway said, ‘Life breaks everyone,’ and if we can’t see those breaks, we’re living in a false world.”

Hillman says the physical deterioration of age is real and can be difficult, but he believes it is purposeful, “no accident,” and growing old is not a disease to be cured or quarantined.  Using the metaphor of waking up more frequently at night, he speaks of “waking up to the night.”  As physical eyesight grows dim, the eyes of the soul open.

People who study Hillman’s work will also want to read this memorial piece that Thomas Moore wrote for the Huffington Post.  Moore, a friend who corresponded with Hillman for decades, offers a wonderful summary of one of the key themes of his work:

“I was taken by [Hillman’s] loyalty to Jung expressed through his original and fresh re-working of key ideas. He calmly removed unnecessary gender issues from Jung’s ideas of the anima and soul. He advocated a view of the person as made up of multiple, dynamic faces that should be kept in tension rather than “integrated” into some sentimental notion of wholeness.”

Hillman spent his long life defending such values as soul, authenticity, and imagination.  I could find any number of worthwhile posts about his life and work, but these are enough for now.  They’re enough to allow us to pause and remember the life and work of an exceptional man.