James Hillman - Life and Work

James Hillman's public activities embrace a thirty-five year period: 1960 to the present. After graduating from Trinity College, Dublin, he began private practice in 1955. In 1959 he became the first Director of Studies of the C. G. Jung Institute, Zurich, where he remained until 1969, having completed his doctorate summa cum laude at the University there in the same year. In 1960, his first major book was published in London: Emotion: A Comprehensive Phenomenology of Theories and Their Meanings for Therapy. In 1966, he joined the Eranos circle of annual speakers giving 15 major papers at Ascona through 1989.

In 1970 he took over the editorship of Spring Publications and launched the movement within Jungian psychology towards the imagination of culture, aiming to extract therapy from its confinement within the consulting room so as to include in its care the broader disorders of the collective. This he has since called a therapy of ideas and not only of persons. This movement of thought was named "archetypal psychology" in contradistinction to psychoanalysis and analytical psychology whose focus was mainly personalistic and clinical. His direction of psychological work proved both pioneering and fruitful, as witnessed by the many academics, scholars, clinicians, artists, writers, and urban activists who have used its approach and ideas for their work. The Festival of Archetypal Psychology, organized in honor of James Hillman and attracting over 500 participants, was held in 1992 for six days at the University of Notre Dame in Indiana.

Since returning to the United States (to Dallas, Texas in 1978 and Thompson, Connecticut in 1984) after residing mainly in Europe from 1946 on, his various activities and writings have been concerned with American issues and turning depth psychology toward the world.

James Hillman was a Founding Fellow of the The Dallas Institute of Humanities and Culture which focused on urban design, public education, and civic consciousness.

He was a Teacher at Men's Retreats (also mixed gender and mixed culture retreats) across the United States, in Ireland, and England.

His interest in the arts led him to annual teaching in the Expressive Arts Program at Lesley College and presenting workshops with choreographer Debra McCall on "Myth and Movement." He has spoken to Arts' Therapy Associations and writes for American and Italian art magazines.

He belongs to the Senior Core Faculty teaching at "Evolution of Psychotherapy" Conferences.

He presented his ideas of soul, depression and aesthetics in the BBC-TV programs Affairs of the Heart, Kind of Blue, and the five-part series, Architecture and Imagination.

He was a Patron and Presenter at the bi-annual Myth and Theatre conferences in Avignon, France.

With Robert Bly and Michael Meade he edited an extensive anthology of poetry.

James Hillman also served as Supervisor and Teacher of Jungian Analysts-in-training.

He was featured in the New York Times Magazine (April 1995) for his role in the "return to soul" in American Psychology.

His nationally aclaimed work, The Soul's Code: In Search of Character & Calling (published by Random House) was on the New York Times Bestseller List.

Pioneering aspects of James Hillman's work reflect the variety of areas of his investigation. The term "soul" was re-introduced into psychological discourse via his 1964 book, Suicide and the Soul. Following the lines of Nietzsche, Freud, Jung, and Roscher, Hillman restored psychopathologies to their mythical backgrounds. He further broadened psychotherapy by basing his approach on a Renaissance model for which he was awarded the medal of the Commune of Florence in 1981. The fundamentals were outlined in his Yale University Terry Lectures (published as Re-Visioning Psychology, 1975). These fundamentals include: personification rather than abstract conceptualization of psychic dominants; a style that is more literary than scientistic; the polytheistic configuration of the psyche rather than a unified theistic self; focus on the psychology of the cultural and environmental world rather than exclusively on the human subject.

The concept of "psychic ecology" was first introduced by Hillman in regard to his research in the early 1960s at the Zurich Jung Institute, where his team of co-workers and students collected and phenomenologically classified the behavior of animal images in dreams. This main line of Hillman's work led to several major papers on animals in dreams, including the Cortina volume Animali del Sogno and the book, with painter Margot McLean, Animal Dreams (Chronicle, San Francisco).

"Psychological urbanism," which rests on the theory of anima mundi - or soul in the world - of architecture, city-planning, societal forms, bodily movement, and aesthetics, was a direction Hillman began at the Dallas Institute of Humanities and Culture in 1980.

James Hillman has delivered lectures and keynote addresses in Europe, Japan, North and South America. He is the author of 14 books and an additional 7 books written in collaboration with another author. Translations of his works exist in Italian, German, Portuguese, Japanese, Dutch, Swedish, Hungarian, Danish, Spanish. A complete bibliography of books, essays, interviews, and presentations is listed in Archetypal Psychology: A Brief Account.

His work has entered the literature of academic culture, clinical theory, and the arts; it has dissertations devoted to it, and has been reviewed by the popular press as well as major papers and news-papers in the United States and Italy.

Chronology

Born, 1926 in a hotel room, Atlantic City, New Jersey and attended public schools.

US Navy, Hospital Corps, 1944-46; Newswriter, US Forces Network, Germany, 1946.

Attended the Sorbonne, 1947 and Trinity College, Dublin (graduated with First Class Honors), 1950

University of Zurich, Ph.D., Summa cum laude, 1959; C.G. Jung Institute, Zurich, Analyst's Diploma, 1959

Director of Studies, C.G. Jung Institute, Zurich, 1959-69; Board, Swiss Society of Jungian Analysts, 1961-67

Assoc. Editor, Envoy - An Irish Review of Literature and the Arts, 1949-51; Editor, Studies in Jungian Thought, Northwestern University Press, 1967-74; Editor, now Senior Editor, Spring: An Annual of Archetype and Culture, 1970 &endash; present

Willitts Lecturer, University of Chicago, 1968

Dwight Harrington Terry Lecturer, Yale University, 1972

William James Lecturer, Harvard University, 1973

Visiting Professor, Syracuse University, 1976

Spencer Trask Lecturer, Princeton University, 1984

Graduate Dean, University of Dallas, 1979-80; Founding Fellow, The Dallas Institute of Humanities and Culture

Keynote Address: with Nobel Laureate, David Hubel, "The Colors of Life" Conference, Turin, Italy, 1995; with Poet Laureate, Rita Dove, on "Beauty," Skye International Meeting, New York City, 1995

Honorary Secretary, International Association for Analytical Psychology, 1977-80; Ethics Committee, Inter-regional Society of Jungian Analysts, 1984-87

President, Spring Publications, Inc.

Member, Global Business Network

Patron, Schumacher College, Devon, England

Key to the City of Dallas, Texas, 1980; Medal of the Commune of Florence, Italy, 1981; Honorary Citizen, Chiavari, Italy, 1996

Pulitzer Prize Nomination for Re-Visioning Psychology, 1975

Award, Center for Psychology and Social Change, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1993

Gradiva Award for Film, National Association for the Advancement of Psychoanalysis, New York, 1996

Tikkun Award for Contributions to a Politics of Ethics & Meaning, Washington, DC, 1996

Awarded the Medal of the Presidency of the Italian Republic, 2001