Hillman says it's time to be more than just a hero

I have been reading James Hillman, the archetypal psychologist with Jungian roots, for a number of weeks now. His work is difficult for me, not because it feels alien – not at all, actually – but rather because it demands a kind of thinking, feeling, seeing, imagining that goes against the grain of habitual western thought & judgment patterns, the type which both my formal & self-taught education have incalculated into my psyche. I'd read Hillman before, a few years ago, but I seem to understand him more easily now.

An idea that is central to what I mean about his work turning things upside-down would be the way he insists upon the heroic idea of getting on with life, both inner & outer, as only one way of being-in-the-world that has validity, a way that often, in fact, causes inflation of the ego self & dismisses much of what contributes to what he calls "soul-making". Hillman is a man who thinks controlling everything (an impossibility), getting "on top" of the ladder in every instance, is a manic way of proceeding in the world. He calls for slowing down, for living a depression as opposed to merely killing it, for looking at the face of things as oppose to always classifying, for seeing in failure a chance, not to learn a "lesson" so much as to expand & explore & get to know psyche & imagination. He has this idea of the poetic basis of the mind as the seat of soulful being. He sees us each as many persons whose Christian roots, whether consciously or unconsciously, have us repressing so many sides of our personalities in instances where doing so is inappropriate. He contends always thinking in terms of opposites – good/bad, dark/light, negative/positive – traps us into not taking things for what they are. If I say light is good, for example, thinking in opposites will have me saying dark is bad, as opposed to getting at its differences. Pleasure/pain oppositions gets me stuck designating anything painful as bad & to be avoided, where as much comes from pain that shouldn't be avoided, that contributes to valid expansion. It's not that he champions unhappiness; rather he believes in its necessity over & beyond merely showing us via opposition happiness.

It is interesting to me that he says if you "look" at a depression as opposed to just try to repress it, you create soul. The idea is not to identify with the depression, but rather to LOOK at it. Oh dear – I'm using such abstract language here. At any rate, it appears to have a lot to do with what Keats called "negative capacity", & with resting with images long enough to gain insight into them. It is about soul (in the dirt) as opposed to spirit (in the clouds). It is about imagining as opposed to literalizing…