James Hillman devoted his creative life to articulating an archetypal psychology that was firmly rooted in the work of C. G. Jung. Hillman begins with Jung’s statement “image is Psyche”, which he took to mean that “the soul is constituted of images, that the soul is primarily an imagining activity.” Through its work with images, archetypal psychology aims to return soul to its central place in psychology and to render soul-making the central concern of depth psychologists—both within clinical practice and beyond.
This seminar describes the Jungian roots and core ideas of archetypal psychology, including the reality of the psyche, its plural nature, its foundation in myth, and its influence in culture. Above all, we will explore archetypal psychology’s devotion to the image—its autonomy and aliveness, and its individuation. We find these images in myth, which Hillman calls “the primary and irreducible language of archetypal patterns” that shape human existence. Turning to myth for archetypal patterns “locates psychology in the cultural imagination,” Hillman says, but that is not all. It returns depth psychology to the ancient notion of a world soul, the anima mundi, and the idea that soul is in all things. The task is to recover an animated sensibility so that we pause, reflect, imagine, and thereby attend to the world’s deep and limitless interiority, its soul.
Participants will be invited to bring images from dream, waking vision, reverie, and creative projects, and clinical practice and work with them using the four moves Hillman defines in Re-visioning Psychology: personifying, psychologizing, pathologizing, and de-humanizing. Throughout, we will develop a lively sense of psyche and enjoy psyche’s natural aliveness.