Who inspires me 5: James Hillman

So, I had read “Care of the Soul” by Thomas Moore and found it deeply moving. It was a book about the nurturing of our souls in a world that alienates us. Moore had been a Jesuit monk, and has a doctorate in religion, and further degrees in music and psychology. He worked for a while as a psychotherapist. The book was one of the most startling books I had read – I didn’t pretend to understand all that he was writing about, but it was as though the writing was speaking to something within me that “got” what he was saying even if I didn’t grasp it at a surface level.

I looked around for other work by the same author. He had edited a book called “A Blue Fire” which was extracted writings of James Hillman. And that was the beginning of a reading and listening journey that took me through 15 of his books, each pushing my thinking into new arenas. I had never read psychology or soul work that travelled so widely through architecture, mythology, art, theology, fiction, recipe books and on to the archetype of insects.

James Hillman became a major focus for the PhD thesis I was working on. This work had begun with studying Carl Jung. Then I found that Hillman had studied with Jung in Zürich. He became the Director of Studies at the Jung Institute in Zürich before relocating to the USA where he founded a new movement of Archetypal Psychology (although I suspect he would object to it being described that way). He was also editor of Spring Publications which featured many of the authors within the movement – Charles Boer, Robert Sardello and Thomas Moore himself.

The movement founded by Hillman was not without controversy. Many traditional Jungians thought that he had created a branch of psychology that was frozen in time, reaching back to Platonic thinking, steeped in Greek mythology. They also argued that he had discarded much of what was core to Jung’s work.

Nonetheless, the journey it took me on was fascinating. As a poet, I really enjoyed the way he worked with language and unpacked its latent meaning – often delving back to the derivation of meaning in words to reveal what’s going on when we use language. Fascinating!

Hillman’s work had a huge impact on me – it shaped my thesis, and it drove some of my mid-career thinking about what drives the self forwards. Perhaps his most accessible book is “The Soul’s Code” which puts forward a view that we are born with something in us that drives us forward to fulfil our purpose in life. If you have ever found yourself chasing something, or driven to distraction by something that you have to do – you might find a lot of sense in what he has to say.

Hillman died in 2011 at the age of 85. His substantial collection of books and papers are located at  the Pacifica Graduate Institute in Carpinteria, California. Most of his books are still in print and well worth dipping into.