James Hillman
James Hillman
James Hillmanwas an American psychologist. He studied at, and then guided studies for, the C.G. Jung Institute in Zurich. He founded a movement toward archetypal psychology and retired into private practice, writing and traveling to lecture, until his death at his home in Connecticut...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPsychologist
CountryUnited States of America
war vietnam faults
You don't attack the grunts of Vietnam; you blame the theory behind the war. Nobody who fought in that war was at fault. It was the war itself that was at fault.
character animal night
I like to imagine a person's psyche to be like a boardinghouse full of characters. The ones who show up regularly and who habitually follow the house rules may not have met other long-term residents who stay behind closed doors, or who only appear at night. An adequate theory of character must make room for character actors, for the stuntmen and animal handlers, for all the figures who play bit parts and produce unexpected acts. They often make the show fateful, or tragic, or farcically absurd.
war heart winning
My war - and I have yet to win a decisive battle - is with the modes of thought that and conditioned feelings that prevail in psychology and therefore also in the way we think and feel about our being. Of these conditions none are more tyrannical than the convictions that clamp the mind and heart into positivistic science (geneticism and computerism), economics (bottom-line capitalism), and single-minded faith (fundamentalism).
time loss soul
Without time for loss you don't have time for soul.
class environment biology
Yes, there's genetics. Yes, there are chromosomes. Yes, there's biology. Yes, there are environment, sociology, parenting, economics, class, and all of that. But there is something else, as well.
childhood way determined
Our lives are determined less by our childhood than by the traumatic way we have learned to remember our childhoods.
i-can
I can no longer be sure whether the psyche is in me or whether I'm in the psyche...
letting-go angel firsts
It is impossible to see the angel unless you first have a notion of it.
character world stories
You are born with a character; it is given, a gift, as the old stories say, from the guardians upon your birth...Each person enters the world called.
stars fall character
Character forms a life regardless of how obscurely that life is lived and how little light falls on it from the stars.
blessing
....anything you attend to carefully can bring blessing....
soul way problem
Pathology is not a problem to be solved, but the soul's way of working on itself.
inspirational change hurt
If you are still being hurt by an event that happened to you at twelve, it is the thought that is hurting you now.
mother dream country
A mother should have some fantasy about her child's future. It will increase her interest in the child, for one thing. To turn the fantasy into a program to make the child fly an airplane across the country, for example, isn't the point. That's the fulfillment of the parent's own dreams. That's different. Having a fantasy - which the child will either seek to fulfill or rebel against furiously - at least gives a child some expectation to meet or reject.