We buried James Hillman three days ago in a small country cemetery in northeast Connecticut, just as an unseasonal early nor'easter began dropping heavy, wet snowflakes on the area. James was 86 and had had bone cancer, and had continued working on projects until two weeks before he died. Obituaries emphasized his role in the men's movement of two or three decades ago, but those of us who were close to him knew him as a genius in the field of depth psychology.
People don't generally know his work too well because it is so subtle and steeped in traditions of philosophy, religion, the arts and especially in the intricacies of Freud and Jung. James attended the Sorbonne in Paris and Trinity College in Dublin before studying Jung in earnest and becoming head of Jungian Studies in Zürich. He was not only ahead of his time, he went against its tendencies to quantify psychology and reduce it to key-word theories and techniques.
I got to know him first in the early '70s through a correspondence between Zürich, where he was publishing astonishing articles, and Syracuse, where I was doing my doctoral studies. The correspondence lasted until a few weeks ago. I was taken by his 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. In hundreds of pages he worked through the struggle between age and youth, senex and puer, that causes individuals and culture itself to stumble.
In the early '80s we were both living in Dallas, where we cemented our friendship while presenting lectures and workshops at the Dallas Institute of Humanities and Culture and over spicey Mexican dinners at small family-owned restaurants that James preferred. In Dallas he made two significant moves in his thinking: one toward the ancient idea of anima mundi, the soul of the world. He didn't understand this idea in the usual abstract philosophical way but instead lectured and wrote about life in the city and architecture and transportation. The other key focus then was on working with images. He had written a remarkable book on dreams, "The Dream and the Underworld," where he suggested that we go down into a dream and be affected by it rather than bring it up into the world of ideas we already know. He went on to differentiate images from symbols, saying that an image doesn't stand for something we already know and that we shouldn't translate images into concepts. Shortly before he died, he and I were invited to return to Dallas to help celebrate the institute's 30th anniversary. James told me he had more ideas about images that he wanted to present, an even purer approach that preserved their integrity.
James's many 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. He changed my life by being more than a mentor and a steady, caring friend. If I had to sum up his life, I would say that he lived in the lofty realm of thought and yet also like one of the animals he loved so much. He was always close to his passions and appetites and lived with a fullness of vitality I have never seen elsewhere. To me, he taught more in his lifestyle and in his conversation than in his writing, and yet his books and articles are the most precious objects I have around me.
Decades ago I wrote a reader of his early works, "A Blue Fire" -- his title. It was an arduous project, but I wanted to give something back to him. Now I feel inspired to try again to make his work more accessible and better known. I don't know what life will be like now without James Hillman in it, but I know that he left us a rich treasury of writing that needs to be read, understood and appreciated.
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So i looked everywhere in Jim's work, did not find it. Called him and he knew the paragraph but he too couldn't find it, and we were laughing. BUT I don't think we consulted the most obvious person, you nor the most obvious place --your book. Do you know where is this idea. It's a midlle work and a necesssary idea like Vonnegot's "Karass" bur so well said. Any clue>? Wendy from FB
Your focus on the animus mundi and images may engage our own sense of exploration and rediscovery: without a sense of the soul embodied in everyday moments, it is difficult to foresee what will motivate us to treat the world and each other better; just as it is difficult to see how we will transform human nature for the better until we return to "that mind within the mind, which precedes words" (as the ancient Taoists posited).
I look forward to your next reader of JH's insightful and inspiring works.
Highest Regards,
William
A therapist friend and Pacifica Graduate emailed me the day of his passing, writing only, "We are the front line now." As I tear thinking about what loss that entails, I also understand that he is absolutely correct.
Thank you James Hillman for your indissoluble passion against the literal and ethereal. Thank you for your frankness. Thank you for your depth.
PS. Thank you Thomas Moore. My cohort and I owe you a debt of gratitude for your writings and your wisdom as well. I hope I may one day get to shake your hand.
A beautiful statement. I might rather say that JH was against the literal and the abstract. The ethereal of a sort has a place in his (our) Neoplatonic thinking, though James didn't float in that realm typically. We differed in that I came out of theology and have always felt partly at home in the ethereal. Look at Robert Fludd's chart of the monochord to get an idea of what I mean. Whenever I spoke about such things in his presence, he would turn one eye askance and would either pounce on my statement or rattle his sword. We both enjoyed this parrying.
The tears gathered more thickly in his eyes and in the partial darkness he imagined he saw the form of a young man standing under a dripping tree. Other forms were near. His soul had approached that region where dwell the vast hosts of the dead. He was conscious of, but could not apprehend, their flickering existence. His own identity was fading out into a gray impalpable world: the solid world itself was dissolving and dwindling.
A few light taps upon the pane made him turn to the window. It had begun to snow again. He watched sleepily the flakes, silver and dark,falling obliquely against the lamplight. The time had come for him to set out on his journey westward. Yes, the newspapers were right: snow was general all over Ireland. It was falling on every part of the dark central plain, on the the treeless hills, falling softly upon the Bog of Allen and, farther westward, softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves. It was falling too upon every part of the lonely churchyard on the hill where Michael Furey lay buried. It lay thickly drifted on the crooked crosses and headstones, on the spears of the little gate, on the barren thorns. His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.
Chuck McIntyre
Nothing new here; and perhaps we should not try to achieve unity, but as you say "live the tensions" etc. I can see the move Hillman made away from Jung's idea of integrated individuation, based on the SELF-the soul's Archetypal Image of Unity< and I know he was aware of Neoplatonism in its Classical forms. Beyond sense of Identity and personal history (empiricist ideas) I still am not quite able to work out how he saw this as still Neoplatonic (?) How does he overcome "Disiecta membra" of plural Images? Maybe a Unity that is rather than "fantasy" an Ideal Limit?