Dr. James Hillman Live at Mythic Journeys Part 1

[jsbach1000]

e' morto Hillman... no tu non sei morto Hillman... tu sei proprio schiattato... ma schiattare non e' una parola brutta... deriva dal latino "schiatteus".. che come tu ci hai insegnato significa... "saggezza"...saggezza....

[Krsanna]

I sense that Hillman might invite Christians to grieve the glib dismissal of Christianity. Perhaps the Christian solution to their condition as G.W. Bush richly expressed it is a statement of the condition. LOL. I don't for an instant grieve the mediaeval imagination with its invention of compassion. Of course, we're all welcome to opinions. Jung addressed the basic condition in "The Answer To Job." I like it a lot.

[jeremy4ga]

my most recent observation on psychology and analysis is that it is for the rich. Those who have money and "power." Seeing this fabrication in many of Jung's students who have "mystic justification." I see now that the missing element of spirit for everyday is evident. My justification for this that Jung himself was not born rich and remained, in what I observe, humanistic in his justifications. Although he had flaws. He remained an everyman as just his upbringing had him...

[andrjsh]

Hillman's glib dismissal of Christianity ignores the richness of the mediaeval imagination and worldview, as well as the roles of resurrection (Osiris, Isis, Attis, Zagreus, etc.), salvation, & morality in pre-Christian and non-Christian religions.

[GeneralBlister]

@andrjsh read him andl listen to him- he meant no more than what he actually said- he's more aware of the power of resurrection (he also knows its place) and pre christian mythologies...

[YAH619]

ALEJANDRO JODOROWSKY !!!!!!!!

[akroatis]

You're probably right on all counts, keytoothed. I wouldn't know much about it since I live in Cyprus, not in the US. The sins of individual Christians, and even of Christian groups, do not disprove the truth of Christianity. That would be like saying that therapy doesn't work, because a large number of fraudulent professionals sleep with their clients or exploit them in other ways. Anyway, you have the right to your point of view! I wish you a Merry Christmas, sincerely.

[akroatis]

BTW, I'm glad to have heard recently that Dr Hillman has survived his health crisis.

[molloyx]

The soulessness of the modern age? Again it seems such an easy mark. Well amplified by the glib horrors of corporate media. If the question becomes is corporate media, that dull minded for profit whore, more sinister now than it was a generation ago, or two genrations ago, the answer might be yes. But it is a dismal and dishonest mirror, entirely obsessed with freakish celebrity and massively disnterested in the lot of the average person. They remain invisible, unaccounted for, dispossessed.

[mitohistoriador]

With all due respect, your comments only demonstrate the inability of the educated man of today to understand what the notion of "soul" or psyche is; your argument is the opposite of itself: it demonstrates the soullessness of the materialistic intellect unable to grasp the other of itself. So the tacit utopianism that you charge my statement with, which shows that you don't understand the ruthless wilderness of the psyche, is really your own: that utopian materialistic belief in "progress."

[molloyx]

All right then I will rewind and ask the obvious question, based of course on your supposition that we are 'living in such a soulless era'. On what basis have you determined this? And, moreover, does your style of analysis allow for the consideration of the interior lives of those who the routine practice of history consistenly evaporates or marginalizes? ''The way throught the world/ is more difficult to find/ than the way beyond it.' -Wallace Stevens.

[mitohistoriador]

Well, we could do well to comment on what Hillman says in this video, for here he both affirms and repudiates the belief that "the gods have fled." There is nothing easier than to point to omnipresent signs of the soullessness of a technocratic, Capitalistic era. Without touching the romantics, we can begin with Max Weber's observation of the "disenchantment of Nature by science"; it is in our "modern" relation to Nature that you can easily see the malady of the soulless predicament of modern co

[molloyx]

A technocratic, capitalistic era might be nothing more remarkable than new clothing adjusted to suit the frame of the 'previous' emporer. The rise of science, in large part a close analysis of nature, has had a complex compound impact on all societies and individuals, sometimes amplifying distress and alienation, sometimes allowing less enslavement to the grinding daily business of survival. To..... loaf and invite consideration of the soul, to casually ruin something from Walt Whitman.

[mitohistoriador]

Hillman is so far from the declaration of Nietzsche's mad man, that God [even the God who killed these other 'pagan' gods] is dead and that we have killed them. When he says, are not the Gods the enchantment of every living thing, etc...he seems to forget that we are indeed living in such a soulless era, that it has already happened, the Gods are dead. Sorry. Interiorized as psychopathologies is hardly an adequate translation of the word "God," if it is to have its true meaning as "thing-itself"

[molloyx]

That we are indeed living in such a soulless era? More a grey and self serving sentiment than fact by any real measure. This exemplifies a certain 'nostalgia for the mud'that is passed on from generation to generation with a certain 'insightless' ease, a sop, really, to the anxious minds of an each unsteady 'new' age, ever later notorious for its lack of useful imagination.

[mitohistoriador]

I agree with you about the 'new age" milk sops that usually crowd around Jungian thought. But am I to believe that we live in a very "soulful" time? Could there be a nostalgia for a reason of the heart the head of our age knows all too little about? There are plenty of "factual measures" in which you see reflected the soullessness of so-called modern people. Otherwise, am I supposes that we have come "farther" in spiritual matters than any other age? What a self-serving hubris with no measure!

[molloyx]

There is an ordinary generational narcissism that so easily encourages such pre-buttered tropes as 'such a souless era'. My sense of history says that there is progressively less basic misery, less grotesque superstition , less grim control of thought and expression by rigid religious and political authorities. Name, if you can, that last Golden Age of Soul that included more than the elites?

[mitohistoriador]

An age where the archetypal psyche still informs its mythology, rather than today's propagandistic "myths" projected by the "entertainment industry," is nothing like a paradisiacal myth of the Grecko-Roman "Golden Age"-not even the actual myth of the Golden Age is told as an event BEFORE the beginnings of civilization. Not even mythologically is your position justifiable. But the utopianism you call out does belong to the MODERN myth of scientific "progress" and Darwinian "cultural evolution"

[mitohistoriador]

Not even the actual myth of the Golden Age which is told as an event BEFORE the beginnings of civilization, justifies a utopian conception of the soul. Just ask what the Native American think of our so-called "progress." Ask the bold eager, the condor, the polar bears--ASK THE PLANET what it thinks of your ethnocentric and humanistic presumptions of "progress"! But why don't you? Because the planet is to you a soulless entity, material for exploitation, a narcissistic article of consumption.

[mitohistoriador]

"And by putting the burden of rebirth of the Gods on us, you show that you do not really reckon any more with the Gods as the innermost truth of real life, much as you pretend to be doing. To be sure, the Gods need us humans. But if they were still alive, all the world would serve them and praise their name. We could not help it, because this is the sign that the Gods are alive (just like any joy or love instinctively spills over into behavior and speech). (Giegerich SOUL'S LOGICAL LIFE 178)

[mitohistoriador]

[cont.] "Conversely, the wide-spread feeling of a loss of meaning and the death of God is the spontaneous self-manifestation of the psychological obsolescence of God and Gods. All Hillman has to offer by way of an answer to the predicament of the modern soul seems to boil down to what can be expressed in the lines, Gimme that old-time [i.e., pagan] religion, its good enough for me. " (Giegerich SOUL'S LOGICAL LIFE 178-9)

[NatureIsNotHuman]

Hillman is unbelievably biased when dismissing the myth of Christianity which has enabled individuality. He strangely refuses to see that and this is a shame to a psychologist. Pagan culture was a group culture. Hillman even doesn't try to understand christian myth and psychology, as C.G.Jung did - he just dismisses it which would mean dismissing all western heritage of christian era, including C.G.Jung. He invites to mourn its end somewhere. How this is different from Apocalypse, uh?

[Herumachis]

I have not read Hillman, only Jung. But dismissing the symbolism of Christ, the solar babe, etc., would indeed be ludicrous considering his import in alchemy. But I do welcome a stamping down of Churchianity's vile non-individual herd waters. 1000 around 1 man = 1 man attained at best, while the 1000 are branded, & led back to the TV set, etc. Not nearly enough individuality to spur self-transformation at present. Magick, alchemy, & yoga, i.e. Self Will individual practices, are the Key.

[NatureIsNotHuman]

Churchianity, you say - never heard of such. How can I take your comment seriously?

[mitohistoriador]

You are quite right NatureIsNotHuman, Hillman in fact in his dismissal of the Christian tradition falls unconsciously in a Christian even puritanical "burning of the heretic" which for the heretic is the orthodoxy. In accusing Christianity for "killing" the pagan world, Hillman falls into a psychology of blame which is strictly monotheistic. Giegerich, on the other hand, makes a real attempt at working through the Christian Complex, by means of but still imprisoned by Hegelian dialectics.

[whtecrw]

I would like to talk to Dr. Hillman. I read his book on war, because I was reading Bair's biography of Jung. Jung wrote a book called "Wotan" just before the outbreak of WW2. His warning was clear. Since Hillman studied with Jung, why didn't he mention Jung's work in the area? I will be following more of Hillman.

[Michelle4you19]

omg my friends dad has that name lol!

[pennilesscripple]

thank you for posting this

[bambinuccia]

great idea to post dr. Hillman's lectures! Thanks!