James Hillman - The Essential James Hillman: A Blue Fire

THE ESSENTIAL
JAMES HILLMAN

O ne of today's most important and imaginative thinkers in psychology here gathers together for the first time selections from many of his seminal essays and books on archetypal psychology. Distilling the essence of James Hillman's writings while retaining their power, this anthology offers readers an overview of Hillman's path-breaking approach to imaginai psychology, encompassing Greek mythology, Renaissance philosophy, the study of art, history, and literature as well as critical interpretations of Freud and Jung. Such fundamental themes in Hillman's thought as The Poetic Basis of Mind, Dreams and the Blood Soul, The Divine Face of Things, and Psychoanalysis in the Street form chapters of this book, each introduced by Thomas Moore, who has been teaching and practicing Hillman's psychology for many years. These introductions, in addition to the thematic organization, help the reader see the connections between Hillman's many revisionings of psychoanalysis; and the selections, ranging from the popular essays on betrayal and suicide to Hillman's passionate call for the restoration of soul to the world of things, to humorous and biting comments on everyday life, to finding meaning in images of bad fathers and mothers and exploring the tension between youth and age, typify Hillman's extraordinary sensitivity to the outer world that influences the inner world of consciousness and perception.

James Hillman brings soul to psychology and modern life. With this book he provides an introduction to his thought and presents an angle on experience aimed at restoring passion and awareness to a world out of touch with heart and beauty.

Formerly director of studies at the Jung Institute in Zurich, James Hillman lives and practices psychotherapy in Connecticut. He is the author of many works, including Re-Visioning Psychology, The Myth of Analysis, The Dream and the Underworld, and Inter Views.

Founder and director of the Institute for the Study of Imagination in West Stockbridge, Massachusetts, Thomas Moore is a writer and psychotherapist. His books include The Planets Within and Rituals of the Imagination.

THE
ESSENTIAL
JAMES
HILLMAN

A BLUE FIRE

INTRODUCED AND EDITED BY Thomas Moore
IN COLLABORATION WITH THE AUTHOR

First published in Great Britain 1990
by Routledge
27 Church Road, Hove, East Sussex, BN3 2FA

Reprinted 1994, 1998

Transferred to Digital Printing 2008

1989 James Hillman
Contribution 1989 Thomas Moore

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN: 978-0-415-05303-7 (pbk)

Publisher's Note
The publisher has gone to great lengths to ensure the quality of this reprint but points out that some imperfections in the original may be apparent

Joints: whole and not whole,
connected-separate, consonant-dissonant.

HERACLITUS

As rational metaphysics teaches that man
becomes all things by understanding them,
imaginative metaphysics shows that man
becomes all things by not understanding them,
for when he does not understand he
becomes them by transforming himself into them.

VICO, New Science

In his book Inter Views, James Hillman remarks that instead of being the founder of a school of thought, he sees himself as the member of a community of people in various fields who are at work re-visioning things. The selections from his writings gathered here, these pieces, for that is what they are, demonstrate the range of Hillman's re-visioning imagination. From the conception of this book, members of that re-visioning community, obviously inspired by James Hillman's writings and attached to his work, have offered their encouragement and detailed suggestions. For their helpful contributions I would like to thank David Miller, Dan Noel, Lynda Sexson, Shaun McNiff, Edward Casey, Howard McConeghey, Ellen Kaplan-Maxfeld, and Lee Robbins. I received constant valuable suggestions and support also from Kathy Zilbermann and Christopher Bamford. I would like to acknowledge Charles Boer's coauthorship with James Hillman of Freud's Own Cookbook. Finally, I would like to express my appreciation to James Hillman, who helped in selecting passages and refining the final text. His passion for ideas and love of language made the editing of this collection a collaborative work filled with learning and pleasure.

THOMAS MOORE

James Hillman is an artist of psychology. If it sounds odd to call a psychologist an artist, then you, the reader, know your task as you take up this anthology. You will be challenged all along the way to rethink, to re-vision, and to reimagine. The difficulty in reading Hillman is not to learn a new bag of techniques or a new conceptual system. Hillman demands nothing short of a new way of thinking. He takes psychoanalysis out of the context of medicine and health, not only in the obvious ways, rejecting the medical model, but in subtle ways: asking us to give up fantasies of cure, repair, growth, self-improvement, understanding, and well-being as primary motives for psychological work. He is more a painter than a physician, more a musician than a social scientist, and more an alchemist than a traditional philosopher.

This art of psychology is apparent in the way Hillman writes. For him, to re-vision psychology implies re-visioning writing about psychology. Continually he suggests, insinuates, argues, exaggerates, redefines, and etymologizes. He likes to hold dialogues in his writing. He brings footnotes into the music of his argument. His style may change from one essay to the next. His books often depart from the usual in form. He often collaborates, comments on an old text, and without warning wanders into excursions.

If you were to apply the Renaissance notion of rhetoric, in which various styles of expression correspond to the various gods and goddesses, you would find many classical modes in the writings included here. The polemics of Mars shine through clearly, as Hillman separates (the traditional work of Mars) his version of psychologizing from that of others, both friends and foes. A venusian appreciation for the sensuality of words and ideas, so rare in modern analytical writing, appears in his language and in the tapestry of his thinking. Saturn is there, too, with his incorrigible love of tradition and abstraction. Hillman gives over to Saturn by indulging in detailed footnotes. But the true archon of these writings is Mercury, the god who is always in transit between the precincts of the divine and the concerns of the human.

The elaborate psychological theory sketched in this collection of writings glistens with a strong tincture of Mercury. According to medieval and Renaissance alchemists and philosophers, Mercury is the god who reveals insight in the colors of a thing, in the surprise visages that appear when a thing is turned around and over and upside down. Hillman takes philosophy into his hands and speaks elegantly about it, but his words do not sound like philosophy. He speaks of religion in ways that worry theologians and devotees and yet give religious language new life. He takes up ancient mythology and alchemy and turns them so that they speak to the most recent concerns. Above all, he re-visions psychology, taking it back from those who use it as a science of behavior, to treat it as an art of the soul.