I can't very easily put to words my regard for this man. I'm still reading, discovering, exalting in, and being astonished by his work. I'll let some of the words of others that have experienced his thoughts live here:
His examination of the heart image clears away constricting notions: heart as muscle and pump, as symbol of royal pride and willful energy, as seat of personal feelings. Freed of these mechanical and personalized notions, the heart can reclaim its place as organ of aesthetic perception that responds directly to the beauty of the sensuous world, much like the instinctual responses of animals. Therefore, to restore the heart's courage and its imaginative power, the soul of the world needs the same attention that we have been giving to the soul of persons. For the soul cannot be owned only by humans. There is a soul quality to all things in the environment, whether "natural" or "manmade".And here is an obituary from the Guardian, written by Mark Kidel, 12/21/2011.
He was a dedicated subversive – witty and original – and an heir to the Jungian tradition, which he reimagined with unceasing brilliance. Fiercely critical of America's dedication to the pursuit of happiness, Hillman focused on the darkest and most difficult human experiences – illness, depression, failure and suicide – not merely as abnormal pathologies that should be avoided or cured.
He drew on the writers and philosophers of the Italian Renaissance and ancient Greece, as well as a romantic tradition that included Keats, Goethe, Schelling and Dilthey. Not wishing to create a school of his own, he proposed an "archetypal" or "imaginal" psychology that would restore the psyche or soul to a discipline he believed to have been diminished by scientific and medical models. Influenced by the French Islamist and Sufi Henry Corbin, the poetics of Gaston Bachelard and the phenomenology of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, he argued that reality is a construct of the imagination – the stuff of myths, dreams, fantasies and images. There was, however, very little about his thought that was divorced from the world of money, war and politics. His unrelenting cultural critique embraced everything from masturbation to plastic surgery, and the design of ceilings to US foreign policy.
The "image" as an expression of the imagination, in poetry, dreams or visual art, was of paramount importance to him – as an antidote to the literalism that dominates everyday discourse. Hillman warned against the reductive tendencies of interpretation and theoretical speculation. He would advocate "sticking to the image", whose often indistinct or paradoxical language spoke, he argued, with more authenticity than verbal discourse. Film was an ideal vehicle for his ideas. He was the main contributor to my films The Heart Has Reasons (Channel 4, 1993), Kind of Blue (Channel 4, 1994) and the five part-series The Architecture of the Imagination (BBC2, 1994).
Hillman drew on pre-Christian modes of thought – a polytheistic perspective reflecting the myriad possibilities of the human psyche, imagined as gods and goddesses, myths and metaphors whose polymorphous nature spoke for the instincts that shape our thoughts and actions more truthfully than the good-and-evil world of oppositions central to the monotheistic religions of the book.
Having practised as an analyst for 40 years, he eventually became highly critical of therapy. He argued that the sickness of humanity lay in the world rather than within each person. Therapy should, he believed, change politics, cities, buildings, schools and our relationship with the natural environment rather than focus solely on people's inner lives.
He moved on to find a wider audience through a series of popular but still provocative books, including The Soul's Code (1997), which reached No 1 on the New York Times bestseller list, and The Force of Character (1999), works which explored, with examples running from Picasso to Hitler, the idea that we all have a calling, an individual and innate character which shapes our lives. In A Terrible Love of War (2004), he reflected on humanity's abiding martial ardour and need for the periodic spilling of blood, at great cost and with incalculable suffering.
As well as writing beautifully – texts of layered intellectual exposition that were dense yet always skilfully articulated – Hillman was an electrifying lecturer and teacher: a tall and charismatic mixture of rabbinical scholar and comedian, with a breathtaking ability to lead his audience through arguments that turned accepted ideas upside down. Unlike other critics of the mainstream approach to mental illness, he was not "anti" anything, seeing in opposition a fantasy that drew us away from meaning and from life. He preferred to deconstruct, often playfully, whether he was speaking of plastic surgery, the politics of the Middle East or the paranoia of the psychiatric profession.James Hillman, 1926-2011. A hero in my world. If you can only read one of his books, get THE SOUL'S CODE.
