James Hillman
Encyclopedia
James Hillman was an American psychologist
. He studied at, and then guided studies for, the C.G. Jung Institute in Zurich
, founded a movement toward archetypal psychology
and retired into private practice, writing and traveling to lecture, until his death at his home in Connecticut
on October 27, 2011.
in 1926. He was the third child of four born to Madeleine and Julian Hillman. James was born in Breakers Hotel, one of the hotels his father owned."James Hillman, Therapist in Men’s Movement, Dies at 85" New York times October 27, 2011 He identified himself as Jewish and European in ancestry. After high school, he studied at the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University for two years.He served in the US Navy Hospital Corps from 1944–1946, after which he attended the Sorbonne
in Paris
, studying English Literature, and Trinity College, Dublin
, graduating with a degree in mental and moral science in 1950. In 1959, he received his PhD from the University of Zurich
, as well as his analyst's diploma from the C.G. Jung Institute and was then appointed as Director of Studies at the institute, a position he held until 1969.
In 1970, Hillman became editor of Spring Publications, a publishing company devoted to advancing Archetypal Psychology as well as publishing books on mythology, philosophy and art. His magnum opus, Re-visioning Psychology, was written in 1975 and nominated for the Pulitzer Prize
. Hillman then helped co-found the Dallas Institute for Humanities and Culture in 1978. His 1997 book, The Soul's Code: In Search of Character and Calling, was on The New York Times Best Seller List that year. His works and ideas about philosophy and psychology have also been popularized by other authors such as Thomas Moore
. His published works, essays, manuscripts, research notes, and correspondence (through 1999) reside at OPUS Archives and Research Center
, located on the campuses of Pacifica Graduate Institute
in Carpinteria, California
.
Hillman was married three times, lastly to Margot McLean-Hillman, who survived him. He has four children from his first marriage: Julia, Carola, Susanne and Laurence. He died at his home in Thompson, Connecticut
, in 2011, from bone cancer.
psychology, in that it attempts to recognize the myriad fantasies
and myth
s (gods, goddesses, demigods, mortals and animals) that shape and are shaped by our psychological lives. The ego is but one psychological fantasy within an assemblage of fantasies. It is part of the Jungian psychology tradition and related to Jung's original Analytical psychology
but is also a radical departure from it in some respects.
Whereas Jung’s psychology focused on the Self, its dynamics and its constellations (ego, anima
, animus
, shadow
), Hillman’s Archetypal psychology
relativizes and deliteralizes the ego and focuses on psyche
, or soul
, and the archai, the deepest patterns of psychic functioning, "the fundamental fantasies that animate all life" (Moore, in Hillman, 1991).
In Re-Visioning Psychology (1975) Hillman sketches a brief lineage of archetypal psychology:
The development of archetypal psychology is influenced by Carl Jung
's analytical psychology
and Classical Greek
, Renaissance
, and Romantic
ideas and thought. Indeed, Hillman’s influences are many, and include other artists, poets, philosophers, alchemists, and psychologists. One could easily include in this list Nietzsche
, Heidegger
, Henry Corbin
, Keats
, Shelley
, Petrarch
, and Paracelsus
. Though all different in their theories and psychologies, they appear to be unified by their common concern for psyche.
, cognitive psychology
) that have adopted a natural scientific philosophy and praxis
. Main criticisms include that they are reductive, materialistic, and literal; they are psychologies without psyche, without soul. Accordingly, Hillman’s work has been an attempt to restore psyche to what he believes to be "its proper place" in psychology. Hillman sees the soul at work in imagination, fantasy, myth and metaphor. He also sees soul revealed in psychopathology, in the symptoms of psychological disorders. Psyche-pathos-logos is the “speech of the suffering soul” or the soul’s suffering of meaning. A great portion of Hillman’s thought attempts to attend to the speech of the soul as it is revealed via images and fantasies.
Archetypal Psychology: A brief account (2006) was written in 1981 as a chapter in the Enciclopedia del Novecento in Italy and published by Hillman in 1983 as a basic introduction to his mythic psychology. It summarizes the major themes set out in his earler, more comprehensive work, Re-Visioning Psychology (1975). The poetic basis of mind places psychological activities in the realm of images. It seeks to explore images rather than explain them. Within this is the idea that by re-working images, that is giving them attention and shaping and forming them until they are clear as possible then a therapeutic process which Hillman calls "soul making" takes place. Hillman equates the psyche with the soul and seeks to set out a psychology based without shame in art and culture. The goal is draw soul into the world via the creative acts of the individual, not excluded it in the name of social order. The potential for soulmaking is revealed in by psychic images to which a person is drawn and apprehends in a meaningful way. Indeed the act of being drawn to and looking deeper at the images presented creates meaning – that is, soul. Further to Hillman's project is a sense of the dream as the basic model of the psyche. This is set out more fully in "The Dream and the Underworld" (1979). In this text Hillman suggests that dreams show us as we are; diverse, taking very different roles, experiencing fragments of meaning that are always on the tip of consciousness. They also place us inside images, rather than images inside us. This move turns traditional epistemology on its head. The source of knowing is not Descartes' "I" but rather there is a world full of images that this I inhabits. Hillman further suggests a new understanding of psychopathology. He stresses the importance of psychopathology to the human experience and replaces it out of a medical understanding into a poetic one. In this idea sickness is a vital part of the way the soul of a person, that illusive and subjective phenomenon becomes known.
For example, Hillman (1983a) discusses a patient's dream about a huge black snake. The dream work would include "keeping the snake" and describing it rather than making it something other than a snake. Hillman notes that "the moment you've defined the snake, interpreted it, you've lost the snake, you've stopped it and the person leaves the hour with a concept about my repressed sexuality or my cold black passions ... and you've lost the snake. The task of analysis is to keep the snake there, the black snake...see, the black snake's no longer necessary the moment it's been interpreted, and you don't need your dreams any more because they've been interpreted" (p. 54). One would inquire more about the snake as it is presented in the dream by the psyche so to draw it forth from its lair in the unconscious. The snake is huge and black, but what else? Is it molting or shedding its skin? Is it sunning itself on a rock? Is it digesting its prey? This descriptive strategy keeps the image alive, in Hillman's opinion, and offers the possibility for understanding the psyche.
Hillman argues against the "nature and nurture" explanations of individual growth, suggesting a third kind of energy, the individual soul which is responsible for much of individual character, aspiration and achievement. He also argues against other environmental and external factors as being the sole determinants of individual growth, including the parental fallacy, dominant in psychoanalysis, whereby our parents are seen as crucial in determining who we are by supplying us with genetic material, conditioning, and behavioral patterns. While acknowledging the importance of external factors in the blossoming of the seed, he argues against attributing all of human individuality, character and achievement to these factors. The book suggests reconnection with the third, superior factor, in discovering our individual nature and in determining who we are and our life's calling.
Hillman suggests a reappraisal for each individual of their own childhood and present life to try and find their particular calling, the seed of their own acorn. He has written that he is to help precipitate a re-souling of the world in the space between rationality and psychology. He complements the notion of growing up, with the notion of growing down, or 'rooting in the earth' and becoming grounded, in order for the individual to further grow. Hillman incorporates logic and rational thought, as well as reference to case histories of well known people in society, whose daimons are considered to be clearly displayed and actualized, in the discussion of the daimon. His arguments are also considered to be in line with the puer aeternus or eternal youth whose brief burning existence could be seen in the work of romantic poets like Keats
and Byron
and in recently deceased young rock stars like Jeff Buckley
or Kurt Cobain
. Hillman also rejects causality
as a defining framework and suggests in its place a shifting form of fate whereby events are not inevitable but bound to be expressed in some way dependent on the character of the soul of the individual.
Psychologist
Psychologist is a professional or academic title used by individuals who are either:* Clinical professionals who work with patients in a variety of therapeutic contexts .* Scientists conducting psychological research or teaching psychology in a college...
. He studied at, and then guided studies for, the C.G. Jung Institute in Zurich
Zürich
Zurich is the largest city in Switzerland and the capital of the canton of Zurich. It is located in central Switzerland at the northwestern tip of Lake Zurich...
, founded a movement toward archetypal psychology
Archetypal psychology
Archetypal psychology is a vein of inquiry into the psyche inaugurated in the early 1900s by Carl Gustav Jung. Jung and his followers, as well as Mircea Eliade, imagined the psychology of the archetypes from studying anthropology and archeology reports of their times and weaving it into their...
and retired into private practice, writing and traveling to lecture, until his death at his home in Connecticut
Connecticut
Connecticut is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States. It is bordered by Rhode Island to the east, Massachusetts to the north, and the state of New York to the west and the south .Connecticut is named for the Connecticut River, the major U.S. river that approximately...
on October 27, 2011.
Life and work
Hillman was born in Atlantic City, New JerseyNew Jersey
New Jersey is a state in the Northeastern and Middle Atlantic regions of the United States. , its population was 8,791,894. It is bordered on the north and east by the state of New York, on the southeast and south by the Atlantic Ocean, on the west by Pennsylvania and on the southwest by Delaware...
in 1926. He was the third child of four born to Madeleine and Julian Hillman. James was born in Breakers Hotel, one of the hotels his father owned."James Hillman, Therapist in Men’s Movement, Dies at 85" New York times October 27, 2011 He identified himself as Jewish and European in ancestry. After high school, he studied at the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University for two years.He served in the US Navy Hospital Corps from 1944–1946, after which he attended the Sorbonne
University of Paris
The University of Paris was a university located in Paris, France and one of the earliest to be established in Europe. It was founded in the mid 12th century, and officially recognized as a university probably between 1160 and 1250...
in Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
, studying English Literature, and Trinity College, Dublin
Trinity College, Dublin
Trinity College, Dublin , formally known as the College of the Holy and Undivided Trinity of Queen Elizabeth near Dublin, was founded in 1592 by letters patent from Queen Elizabeth I as the "mother of a university", Extracts from Letters Patent of Elizabeth I, 1592: "...we...found and...
, graduating with a degree in mental and moral science in 1950. In 1959, he received his PhD from the University of Zurich
University of Zurich
The University of Zurich , located in the city of Zurich, is the largest university in Switzerland, with over 25,000 students. It was founded in 1833 from the existing colleges of theology, law, medicine and a new faculty of philosophy....
, as well as his analyst's diploma from the C.G. Jung Institute and was then appointed as Director of Studies at the institute, a position he held until 1969.
In 1970, Hillman became editor of Spring Publications, a publishing company devoted to advancing Archetypal Psychology as well as publishing books on mythology, philosophy and art. His magnum opus, Re-visioning Psychology, was written in 1975 and nominated for the Pulitzer Prize
Pulitzer Prize
The Pulitzer Prize is a U.S. award for achievements in newspaper and online journalism, literature and musical composition. It was established by American publisher Joseph Pulitzer and is administered by Columbia University in New York City...
. Hillman then helped co-found the Dallas Institute for Humanities and Culture in 1978. His 1997 book, The Soul's Code: In Search of Character and Calling, was on The New York Times Best Seller List that year. His works and ideas about philosophy and psychology have also been popularized by other authors such as Thomas Moore
Thomas Moore (spiritual writer)
Thomas Moore is an American writer of popular spiritual books including the New York Times best seller, Care of the Soul . He is a psychotherapist influenced by the writings of Carl Jung and James Hillman....
. His published works, essays, manuscripts, research notes, and correspondence (through 1999) reside at OPUS Archives and Research Center
OPUS Archives and Research Center
OPUS Archives and Research Center holds the archival collections of scholars in the fields of mythology, depth psychology and archetypal psychology. The archival collections housed at OPUS include: Joseph Campbell, Marija Gimbutas, James Hillman, Jane Hollister Wheelwright and Joseph Wheelwright,...
, located on the campuses of Pacifica Graduate Institute
Pacifica Graduate Institute
Pacifica Graduate Institute is an accredited, for-profit American graduate school with two campuses near Santa Barbara, California. The institute offers master's and doctoral degrees in the fields of psychology, mythological studies, and the humanities....
in Carpinteria, California
California
California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...
.
Hillman was married three times, lastly to Margot McLean-Hillman, who survived him. He has four children from his first marriage: Julia, Carola, Susanne and Laurence. He died at his home in Thompson, Connecticut
Thompson, Connecticut
Thompson is a rural town in Windham County, Connecticut, United States. The town was named after Sir Robert Thompson, an English landholder. The population was 9,458 at the 2010 census...
, in 2011, from bone cancer.
Archetypal psychology
Archetypal psychology is a polytheisticPolytheism
Polytheism is the belief of multiple deities also usually assembled into a pantheon of gods and goddesses, along with their own mythologies and rituals....
psychology, in that it attempts to recognize the myriad fantasies
Fantasy
Fantasy is a genre of fiction that commonly uses magic and other supernatural phenomena as a primary element of plot, theme, or setting. Many works within the genre take place in imaginary worlds where magic is common...
and myth
Mythology
The term mythology can refer either to the study of myths, or to a body or collection of myths. As examples, comparative mythology is the study of connections between myths from different cultures, whereas Greek mythology is the body of myths from ancient Greece...
s (gods, goddesses, demigods, mortals and animals) that shape and are shaped by our psychological lives. The ego is but one psychological fantasy within an assemblage of fantasies. It is part of the Jungian psychology tradition and related to Jung's original Analytical psychology
Analytical psychology
Analytical psychology is the school of psychology originating from the ideas of Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung. His theoretical orientation has been advanced by his students and other thinkers who followed in his tradition. Though they share similarities, analytical psychology is distinct from...
but is also a radical departure from it in some respects.
Whereas Jung’s psychology focused on the Self, its dynamics and its constellations (ego, anima
Anima (Jung)
The anima and animus, in Carl Jung's school of analytical psychology, are the two primary anthropomorphic archetypes of the unconscious mind, as opposed to both the theriomorphic and inferior-function of the shadow archetypes, as well as the abstract symbol sets that formulate the archetype of the...
, animus
Animus
-Psychology :* Anima and animus, Jungian concepts* The ancient Roman concept of animus or soul-Music:*Animus , a Philadelphia, PA based Eastern Mediterranean World Fusion music group...
, shadow
Shadow (psychology)
In Jungian psychology, the shadow or "shadow aspect" is a part of the unconscious mind consisting of repressed weaknesses, shortcomings, and instincts. It is one of the three most recognizable archetypes, the others being the anima and animus and the persona...
), Hillman’s Archetypal psychology
Archetypal psychology
Archetypal psychology is a vein of inquiry into the psyche inaugurated in the early 1900s by Carl Gustav Jung. Jung and his followers, as well as Mircea Eliade, imagined the psychology of the archetypes from studying anthropology and archeology reports of their times and weaving it into their...
relativizes and deliteralizes the ego and focuses on psyche
Psyche (psychology)
The word psyche has a long history of use in psychology and philosophy, dating back to ancient times, and has been one of the fundamental concepts for understanding human nature from a scientific point of view. The English word soul is sometimes used synonymously, especially in older...
, or soul
Soul
A soul in certain spiritual, philosophical, and psychological traditions is the incorporeal essence of a person or living thing or object. Many philosophical and spiritual systems teach that humans have souls, and others teach that all living things and even inanimate objects have souls. The...
, and the archai, the deepest patterns of psychic functioning, "the fundamental fantasies that animate all life" (Moore, in Hillman, 1991).
In Re-Visioning Psychology (1975) Hillman sketches a brief lineage of archetypal psychology:
- By calling upon Jung to begin with, I am partly acknowledging the fundamental debt that archetypal psychology owes him. He is the immediate ancestor in a long line that stretches back through FreudSigmund FreudSigmund Freud , born Sigismund Schlomo Freud , was an Austrian neurologist who founded the discipline of psychoanalysis...
, DiltheyWilhelm DiltheyWilhelm Dilthey was a German historian, psychologist, sociologist and hermeneutic philosopher, who held Hegel's Chair in Philosophy at the University of Berlin. As a polymathic philosopher, working in a modern research university, Dilthey's research interests revolved around questions of...
, ColeridgeSamuel Taylor ColeridgeSamuel Taylor Coleridge was an English poet, Romantic, literary critic and philosopher who, with his friend William Wordsworth, was a founder of the Romantic Movement in England and a member of the Lake Poets. He is probably best known for his poems The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Kubla...
, Schelling, VicoGiambattista VicoGiovanni Battista ' Vico or Vigo was an Italian political philosopher, rhetorician, historian, and jurist....
, FicinoMarsilio FicinoMarsilio Ficino was one of the most influential humanist philosophers of the early Italian Renaissance, an astrologer, a reviver of Neoplatonism who was in touch with every major academic thinker and writer of his day, and the first translator of Plato's complete extant works into Latin...
, PlotinusPlotinusPlotinus was a major philosopher of the ancient world. In his system of theory there are the three principles: the One, the Intellect, and the Soul. His teacher was Ammonius Saccas and he is of the Platonic tradition...
, and PlatoPlatoPlato , was a Classical Greek philosopher, mathematician, student of Socrates, writer of philosophical dialogues, and founder of the Academy in Athens, the first institution of higher learning in the Western world. Along with his mentor, Socrates, and his student, Aristotle, Plato helped to lay the...
to HeraclitusHeraclitusHeraclitus of Ephesus was a pre-Socratic Greek philosopher, a native of the Greek city Ephesus, Ionia, on the coast of Asia Minor. He was of distinguished parentage. Little is known about his early life and education, but he regarded himself as self-taught and a pioneer of wisdom...
- and with even more branches yet to be traced” (p. xvii).
The development of archetypal psychology is influenced by Carl Jung
Carl Jung
Carl Gustav Jung was a Swiss psychiatrist and the founder of Analytical Psychology. Jung is considered the first modern psychiatrist to view the human psyche as "by nature religious" and make it the focus of exploration. Jung is one of the best known researchers in the field of dream analysis and...
's analytical psychology
Analytical psychology
Analytical psychology is the school of psychology originating from the ideas of Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung. His theoretical orientation has been advanced by his students and other thinkers who followed in his tradition. Though they share similarities, analytical psychology is distinct from...
and Classical Greek
Greek philosophy
Ancient Greek philosophy arose in the 6th century BCE and continued through the Hellenistic period, at which point Ancient Greece was incorporated in the Roman Empire...
, Renaissance
Renaissance
The Renaissance was a cultural movement that spanned roughly the 14th to the 17th century, beginning in Italy in the Late Middle Ages and later spreading to the rest of Europe. The term is also used more loosely to refer to the historical era, but since the changes of the Renaissance were not...
, and Romantic
Romanticism
Romanticism was an artistic, literary and intellectual movement that originated in the second half of the 18th century in Europe, and gained strength in reaction to the Industrial Revolution...
ideas and thought. Indeed, Hillman’s influences are many, and include other artists, poets, philosophers, alchemists, and psychologists. One could easily include in this list Nietzsche
Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche was a 19th-century German philosopher, poet, composer and classical philologist...
, Heidegger
Martin Heidegger
Martin Heidegger was a German philosopher known for his existential and phenomenological explorations of the "question of Being."...
, Henry Corbin
Henry Corbin
Henry Corbin was a philosopher, theologian and professor of Islamic Studies at the Sorbonne in Paris, France.Corbin was born in Paris in April 1903. As a boy he revealed the profound sensitivity to music so evident in his work...
, Keats
John Keats
John Keats was an English Romantic poet. Along with Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley, he was one of the key figures in the second generation of the Romantic movement, despite the fact that his work had been in publication for only four years before his death.Although his poems were not...
, Shelley
Percy Bysshe Shelley
Percy Bysshe Shelley was one of the major English Romantic poets and is critically regarded as among the finest lyric poets in the English language. Shelley was famous for his association with John Keats and Lord Byron...
, Petrarch
Petrarch
Francesco Petrarca , known in English as Petrarch, was an Italian scholar, poet and one of the earliest humanists. Petrarch is often called the "Father of Humanism"...
, and Paracelsus
Paracelsus
Paracelsus was a German-Swiss Renaissance physician, botanist, alchemist, astrologer, and general occultist....
. Though all different in their theories and psychologies, they appear to be unified by their common concern for psyche.
Psyche or soul
Hillman has been critical of the 20th century’s psychologies (e.g., biological psychology, behaviorismBehaviorism
Behaviorism , also called the learning perspective , is a philosophy of psychology based on the proposition that all things that organisms do—including acting, thinking, and feeling—can and should be regarded as behaviors, and that psychological disorders are best treated by altering behavior...
, cognitive psychology
Cognitive psychology
Cognitive psychology is a subdiscipline of psychology exploring internal mental processes.It is the study of how people perceive, remember, think, speak, and solve problems.Cognitive psychology differs from previous psychological approaches in two key ways....
) that have adopted a natural scientific philosophy and praxis
Praxis
Praxis is the putting of theory into practice. The term may refer to:* Christian theological praxis* Praxis , the practice of faith, especially worship* The Praxis School, a school of Marxist philosophy...
. Main criticisms include that they are reductive, materialistic, and literal; they are psychologies without psyche, without soul. Accordingly, Hillman’s work has been an attempt to restore psyche to what he believes to be "its proper place" in psychology. Hillman sees the soul at work in imagination, fantasy, myth and metaphor. He also sees soul revealed in psychopathology, in the symptoms of psychological disorders. Psyche-pathos-logos is the “speech of the suffering soul” or the soul’s suffering of meaning. A great portion of Hillman’s thought attempts to attend to the speech of the soul as it is revealed via images and fantasies.
Archetypal Psychology: A brief account (2006) was written in 1981 as a chapter in the Enciclopedia del Novecento in Italy and published by Hillman in 1983 as a basic introduction to his mythic psychology. It summarizes the major themes set out in his earler, more comprehensive work, Re-Visioning Psychology (1975). The poetic basis of mind places psychological activities in the realm of images. It seeks to explore images rather than explain them. Within this is the idea that by re-working images, that is giving them attention and shaping and forming them until they are clear as possible then a therapeutic process which Hillman calls "soul making" takes place. Hillman equates the psyche with the soul and seeks to set out a psychology based without shame in art and culture. The goal is draw soul into the world via the creative acts of the individual, not excluded it in the name of social order. The potential for soulmaking is revealed in by psychic images to which a person is drawn and apprehends in a meaningful way. Indeed the act of being drawn to and looking deeper at the images presented creates meaning – that is, soul. Further to Hillman's project is a sense of the dream as the basic model of the psyche. This is set out more fully in "The Dream and the Underworld" (1979). In this text Hillman suggests that dreams show us as we are; diverse, taking very different roles, experiencing fragments of meaning that are always on the tip of consciousness. They also place us inside images, rather than images inside us. This move turns traditional epistemology on its head. The source of knowing is not Descartes' "I" but rather there is a world full of images that this I inhabits. Hillman further suggests a new understanding of psychopathology. He stresses the importance of psychopathology to the human experience and replaces it out of a medical understanding into a poetic one. In this idea sickness is a vital part of the way the soul of a person, that illusive and subjective phenomenon becomes known.
Dream analysis
Because archetypal psychology is concerned with fantasy, myth, and image, it is not surprising that dreams are considered to be significant in relation to soul and soul-making. Hillman does not believe that dreams are simply random residue or flotsam from waking life (as advanced by physiologists), but neither does he believe that dreams are compensatory for the struggles of waking life, or are invested with “secret” meanings of how one should live, as did Jung. Rather, “dreams tell us where we are, not what to do” (1979). Therefore, Hillman is against the traditional interpretive methods of dream analysis. Hillman’s approach is phenomenological rather than analytic (which breaks the dream down into its constituent parts) and interpretive/hermeneutic (which may make a dream image “something other” than what it appears to be in the dream). His famous dictum with regard to dream content and process is “Stick with the image.”For example, Hillman (1983a) discusses a patient's dream about a huge black snake. The dream work would include "keeping the snake" and describing it rather than making it something other than a snake. Hillman notes that "the moment you've defined the snake, interpreted it, you've lost the snake, you've stopped it and the person leaves the hour with a concept about my repressed sexuality or my cold black passions ... and you've lost the snake. The task of analysis is to keep the snake there, the black snake...see, the black snake's no longer necessary the moment it's been interpreted, and you don't need your dreams any more because they've been interpreted" (p. 54). One would inquire more about the snake as it is presented in the dream by the psyche so to draw it forth from its lair in the unconscious. The snake is huge and black, but what else? Is it molting or shedding its skin? Is it sunning itself on a rock? Is it digesting its prey? This descriptive strategy keeps the image alive, in Hillman's opinion, and offers the possibility for understanding the psyche.
The Soul's Code
Hillman's 1997 book, The Soul's Code: In Search of Character and Calling, outlines what he calls the "acorn theory" of the soul. This theory states that all people already hold the potential for the unique possibilities inside themselves, much as an acorn holds the pattern for an oak tree. The books describes how a unique, individual energy of the soul is contained within each human being, displayed throughout their lifetime and shown in their calling and life's work when it is fully actualized.Hillman argues against the "nature and nurture" explanations of individual growth, suggesting a third kind of energy, the individual soul which is responsible for much of individual character, aspiration and achievement. He also argues against other environmental and external factors as being the sole determinants of individual growth, including the parental fallacy, dominant in psychoanalysis, whereby our parents are seen as crucial in determining who we are by supplying us with genetic material, conditioning, and behavioral patterns. While acknowledging the importance of external factors in the blossoming of the seed, he argues against attributing all of human individuality, character and achievement to these factors. The book suggests reconnection with the third, superior factor, in discovering our individual nature and in determining who we are and our life's calling.
Hillman suggests a reappraisal for each individual of their own childhood and present life to try and find their particular calling, the seed of their own acorn. He has written that he is to help precipitate a re-souling of the world in the space between rationality and psychology. He complements the notion of growing up, with the notion of growing down, or 'rooting in the earth' and becoming grounded, in order for the individual to further grow. Hillman incorporates logic and rational thought, as well as reference to case histories of well known people in society, whose daimons are considered to be clearly displayed and actualized, in the discussion of the daimon. His arguments are also considered to be in line with the puer aeternus or eternal youth whose brief burning existence could be seen in the work of romantic poets like Keats
John Keats
John Keats was an English Romantic poet. Along with Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley, he was one of the key figures in the second generation of the Romantic movement, despite the fact that his work had been in publication for only four years before his death.Although his poems were not...
and Byron
George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron
George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron, later George Gordon Noel, 6th Baron Byron, FRS , commonly known simply as Lord Byron, was a British poet and a leading figure in the Romantic movement...
and in recently deceased young rock stars like Jeff Buckley
Jeff Buckley
Jeffrey Scott "Jeff" Buckley , raised as Scotty Moorhead, was an American singer-songwriter and guitarist. He was the son of Tim Buckley, also a musician...
or Kurt Cobain
Kurt Cobain
Kurt Donald Cobain was an American singer-songwriter, musician and artist, best known as the lead singer and guitarist of the grunge band Nirvana...
. Hillman also rejects causality
Causality
Causality is the relationship between an event and a second event , where the second event is understood as a consequence of the first....
as a defining framework and suggests in its place a shifting form of fate whereby events are not inevitable but bound to be expressed in some way dependent on the character of the soul of the individual.