James Hillman
Wanted psychology to give the soul back its images.
Founder of archetypal psychology, who argued that therapy should deepen the soul rather than cure it.
techniques
We dull our lives by the way we conceive them.
Who they were
James Hillman was the first Director of Studies at the Jung Institute in Zurich, and then spent the rest of his life arguing with the profession he came from. He thought psychology had made a mistake in treating symptoms as problems to be removed: the soul speaks in images, and a symptom is often an image asking to be taken seriously rather than resolved. He rejected the idea of a single unified self in favour of a psyche populated by many figures, and turned attention outward too — arguing that the world itself has a soul, and that anxiety about a degraded environment is a sane response, not a private pathology. His book *The Soul's Code*, with its idea that each life carries an acorn of its own calling, made him a bestseller at seventy.
Famous books
What they left on the shelf
Terms they cared about
Ideas worth knowing
Their big idea
Archetypal Psychology
James Hillman's break from therapy-as-cure. The psyche speaks in images, and the work is to deepen them into meaning rather than resolve them — a soul made of many figures rather than one unified self, and a world that has soul too.
The approach they founded
Analytical (Jungian) Therapy
A journey toward wholeness through symbols, dreams and the integration of the shadow.
Questions in their spirit
What they’d ask you
Sit with one. Answer online, or in the app.
Carry the idea forward
Hillman — What they’d ask you
Psipas asks you one small, honest question at a time — and builds the picture from your answers.