The archetypal psychologist James Hillman, who died on Oct 27th 2011, led a remarkable life: after the war, during which he worked in American Navy hospitals with terribly maimed servicemen, he went to Europe to study philosophy and literature as well as psychology

Maclagan, David

Goldsmiths, University of London: Journals Online

ATOL: Art Therapy Online, 1(4) © 20121Obituary - James Hillman (1926-2011)The archetypal psychologist James Hillman, who died on Oct 27th2011, led a remarkable life: after the war, during which he worked in AmericanNavy hospitals with terribly maimed servicemen, he went to Europe to studyphilosophy and literature as well as psychology. Although he had encounteredJung’s ideas during this period, it was not until after a year spent in India thathe ended up in Zurich and followed the long journey, first training and thenpractising as an analyst between 1955 and 1969 that led to him taking up theposition of Director of Studies at the Jung Institute. A crisis led to him stoppinganalysis for over a year: he resumed, but ended up leaving Zurich for Dallasin 1978. By now he had turned away from analytic work with the inner worldtowards addressing the world outside. He was a founding member of theDallas Institute: here psychological perspectives were applied to a wide rangeof problems, including architecture, economics and other urban issues. Healso got deeply involved with Robert Bly’s experiments in revisioning andsupporting mens’ self-image, co-leading workshops and retreats. LaterHillman was passionately engaged with ecological issues, challenging thetraditional Cartesian view of soul as being an exclusively human attribute. Hewas never afraid of tackling big issues, and whilst he delighted in controversy,he was an unfailingly sharp and stimulating thinker.During most of this time Hillman wrote articles and books on animpressive range of topics- emotion, suicide, dreams, spirituality, money,power and war- as well as being engaged in an interminable battle to redefinethe notion of therapy itself. For a couple of decades he was the editor of‘Spring’, a brilliant, scholarly and reliably provocative journal of archetypalpsychology. By temperament he was a contrarian, loving to turn ideas on theirArt Therapy Online: ATOLATOL: Art Therapy Online, 1(4) © 20122heads and to upset orthodox assumptions. He was also a superb publicspeaker and relished debate and controversy; but at the same time he had aremarkable and patrician courtesy, giving every questioner his full attention.He was certainly no dry scholar, having a great love of good food, aninsatiable curiosity and a vivid sense of humour. Although he was a trulyinspirational figure, he wore his growing fame well: in many ways, he wouldhave said, it was the work that shaped him rather than the other way around,and he was its servant.It is of special concern to art therapists that Hillman was such aninsistent champion of the image, but this was always in ways that foughtagainst its becoming fossilised or being seen through. His interest inmythology was coloured by his ability to turn the traditional Jungian search forsymbolic meanings and the archetypal clichés that so often followed in theirwake into more open-ended and creative explorations. Through a kind of ju-jitsu reversal of perspective, he transformed the concrete or literalised intosomething more active and personified. Hence, for example, he transformedthe clinical and symptomatic notion of ‘pathology’ into the active idiom of‘pathologising’: the soul’s inherent tendency to use an idiom of sickness,morbidity and suffering that was beyond any clinical or diagnostic perspective.In many ways Hillman was drawn to pay attention to what could becalled the blind spots in Jungian psychology: such as the negative image ofthe Puer or the uncertain status of the anima; but he also extended classicalJungian thinking in other domains such as soul-making, polytheisticmythology and the underworld. Central to his approach was the propositionthat every system of ideas, however intellectual or scientific it might seem,has a psychological or imaginal dimension to it: ‘Thus archetypal psychology’sfirst links are with culture and imagination rather than with medical andempirical psychologies’ (Hillman,  1983:1). This insight is central to hisadvocacy of image-work as a key component, not only of therapy in theconsulting-room, but of those forms of therapy (or soul-making) that areinherent in living life more generally.ATOL: Art Therapy Online, 1(4) © 20123Although an archetypal image presents itself as impacted withmeaning, this is not given simply as revelation. It must be madethrough “image work” and “dream work”. The modes of this work maybe concrete and physical as in art, movement, play and occupationaltherapies; but more importantly (because less fixedly symbolic) thiswork is done by “sticking to the image” as a psychological penetrationof what is actually presented including the stance of consciousnessthat is attempting the hermeneutic  (Hillman, 1983: 14).In fact, in a series of articles published in Spring, Hillman demonstratedhis ways of dealing with image at some length, and also explored some of thedifficulties and objections arising there from. Although the images in questionare primarily from dreams, many of the strategies deployed are translatable toimages in art and art therapy. However Hillman later cautioned against theuse of art therapy as a means to some other end- catharsis or sublimation, forexample- and insisted on its essential connection with imagination. Indeed hisapproach could be called a therapy of the imagination as much as a therapythrough imagination. Curiously, though his last wife was, amongst otherthings, an artist, Hillman wrote very little about art itself, and once told me thatwhere he lived he had no artworks on the walls.Nevertheless, it is for these reasons that he is one of the invisibleguardians of art therapy. In a talk given to BAAT members in 1969, Hillmanasked,Would it be possible [….] to realise another kind of approach where thecomplex is encouraged to spin out its fantasies and where therapybecomes an exercise of fantasy and where problems themselves aresimply part of the fantasy. Then one goes into the imaginal world, notfor the sake of a problem, not for the sake of the control apparatus[Ego] and the restoration of it, but for the sake of the imaginal worlditself, in order simply to explore it, to be at home in it, develop animaginal ego that can live in it. In this sense the art therapist (who issupposed to be at the bottom of the hierarchical system in the mentalATOL: Art Therapy Online, 1(4) © 20124health world) would take a much more important position (Hillman,1970: 6).Sadly, this stance, while it is not fully applicable to all the areas in which arttherapists work, has yet to be adopted by art therapy, let alone the widerworld of those in the ‘helping professions’.Sharp, but kind, generous with recognition, but with a penetrating,slightly scary capacity for concentration, James Hillman was as unforgettablein person as he was honest and thought-provoking on paper. He was a rarespirit whose work will long survive him.David Maclagan, August 2012ReferencesHillman, J. (1983) Archetypal Psychology: a brief account, Spring: a journal ofarchetype and culture.Hillman, J. (1970) Towards an Imaginal Psychology, Inscape: Journal of theBritish Association of Art Therapists, 1Hillman, J. (1977) An Enquiry into image, Spring: a journal of archetype andculture.Hillman, J. (1978) Further notes on images, Spring: a journal of archetype andculture.Hillman, J (1979) Image-sense, Spring: a journal of archetype and culture.Biographical details: David Maclagan is a writer, artist and retired ArtTherapist. He has published three books (Creation Myths, Thames & Hudson1977), Psychological Aesthetics' (Jessica Kingsley 1999), and 'Outsider Art'(Reaktion 2009) and his next book 'Line Let Loose: scribbling, doodling andATOL: Art Therapy Online, 1(4) © 20125automatic drawing' will be published by Reaktion next spring. He has alsopublished numerous articles on art, psychoanalysis and art therapy. He livesin West Yorkshire.

Obituary - James Hillman (1926-2011)

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Obituary - James Hillman (1926-2011)

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