See also my
critique of post-Jungian psychologists Edinger and
Romanyshyn.Critique of Archetypal Psychology
Abstract
Today there is a strong tendency towards making Jungian psychology a generic name for a diversity of systems that, although they at the first glance look related, because of similar terminology, their kernels and ideals are completely different from Jung's ideas. One of these theories is Hillman's "archetypal psychology," which radically reinterprets Jung's concept of the archetype, dismisses the important Jungian notion of the self, renounces the process of individuation, devaluates the Jungian method of introversion, opposes Jung's notion of the moral obligation of grasping the unconscious and replaces this with the amoral, aesthetic, attitude of the puer aeternus (eternal youth). Despite this gross repudiation of Jungian psychology, Hillman is embraced by Jungian publishers as a "Jungian" or "post-Jungian" psychologist. But a correct denomination would be "anti-Jungian."
Introduction
The American psychologist
"[phantasy images are] both the raw materials and finished products of the psyche, and are the privileged mode of access- to knowledge of the soul. Nothing is more primary" (Hillman, Re-Visioning Psychology, xi.).
"the soul is constituted of images, [and] that the soul is primarily an imagining activity...." (Hillman. Archetypal Psychology: A Brief Account, p.14).
"The stories that myths tell cannot be documented in histories; the gods and goddesses, and the heroes and their enemies, are told about in stories inscribed in clay and carved in statues, but have they ever been physically seen? The fabulous places of myth are not in this world - all invented, just fables. The long-lasting and ever-renewing vitality of myths has nothing factual behind it" (Hillman, The Souls Code, p.95).
It goes without saying that these beliefs collide head on with a Jungian empirical viewpoint. H. repudiates the factual existence of the inherited archetype as underlying the myths and contends that the latter are mere fables invented by imagination. Nevertheless, according to Hillman, the images painted by phantasy should be regarded as autonomous and godlike. This is, to put it mildly, an unscientific notion that drastically depreciates the Jungian notion of the independent reality of the psyche. The archetypes are not only reduced to images but are also said to have their prototype, not within the psyche, but in a transcendent sphere, outside nature. Furthermore, according to H., modern psychological theories (i.e., other theories than his own) have lost their value since he himself cannot derive any sense of "beauty" from their scientific terms. H. is scornful of other psychological schools and says:
"Again psychology fails what it studies. Neither social psychology, experimental psychology, nor therapeutic psychology find a place for the aesthetic appreciation of a life story" (Hillman, The Souls Code, p.35).
"As evidence of this book's attempt to exit the mortuary is the absence from these pages of the contemporary language of psychology. Except where set apart in quotation marks to keep from contaminating a sentence with psychological morbidities, you will not find any of these infectious agents [...] Little mention of "ego," of "consciousness,"..." (Ibid).
"..."case material", "ego development", "psychotherapy", even "animus-ridden" and "negative mother" -- die on our lips. We can no longer give them belief; they have lost conviction; they no longer are speech that carries soul. This language is dead [...] Because of its own language, psychology becomes anti-therapeutic, an instrument of a new philistinism called 'community mental health,' spreading its kind of mental illness [...] We no longer believe that psychology speaks for the soul" (Hillman, The Myth of Analysis).
Phenomenological
Neoplatonism
Since opposite extremes meet, Hillman's strong phenomenological viewpoint is by himself combined with Neoplatonic conceptions, thereby creating a bewildering hodgepodge that is, actually, the very ideal of this aesthetic paradigm. Hillman asserts that images derive autonomy and operate according to their own will, similar to gods. Gods and goddesses are actually part of Hillman's "archetypal psychology." H. says:
"By providing a divine background of personages and powers for each complex, it [a polytheistic psychology] would aim less at gathering them into a unity..." (James Hillman. "Psychology: Monotheistic or Polytheistic?" p.197).
"...the archetypes of the psyche, as the fundamental structures of the imagination or as fundamentally imaginative phenomena that are transcendent to the world of sense in their value if not their appearance" (Hillman, Archetypal Psychology: A Brief Account, p.12).
Hillman introduces the concept of the anima mundi, the world-soul of the Neoplatonists, and says:
"...psychology is to hear the psyche speaking through all things of the world, thereby recovering the world as a place of soul" (Ibid. p.25).
"The curative or salvational vision of archetypal psychology focuses upon the soul in the world which is also the soul of the world (anima mundi) [...] The artificial tension between soul and world, private and public, interior and exterior thus disappears when the soul as anima mundi, and its making, is located in the world." (Ibid. p.35)
To the phenomenologists not only natural objects but also psychological objects (contents) or "ideal" objects, like any kind of abstract principle, can be made conscious, that is, they can become fully perceivable. It has then not merely become a representation of the psychic object - it is actually the psychic object made evident.
Such a phenomenological viewpoint is not
consonant with analytical psychology. Jungian theorists emphasizes that the
archetype, as a numinous entity, cannot be made fully conscious. The archetypal
feeling cannot be pinpointed in an image that will remain accurate and
persuasive over time. They emphasize that the evident image is not to
be regarded as a psychic content which has become fully integrated with
consciousness. But it is, actually, according to Hillman's psychology.
H.
is said to reduce the importance of conscious understanding. But Hillman's
reduction of the psychic content to a metaphorical image actually causes the
reverse since a metaphorical image is entirely comprehensible by consciousness.
Contrary to this, the Jungian notion of the
symbol is much more profound. A symbol cannot be fully grasped by way of
abstract conscious categories. It ought to be experienced and differentiated,
using active imagination and amplification. A content is never merely an image,
like H. says. A content can be expressed symbolically and the image is always
connected to other contents that lie beyond consciousness. Hillman's
phenomenology implies a devaluation of the unconscious. Today, there are very
many people who have experienced the unconscious and who can verify that images
are amplifiable and that they have consciousness-transcending symbolic
properties.
Demoniac
possession
Hillman's neo-Platonic conceptions are amplified in The Soul's Code where he contends, among other things, that criminality derives from a bad seed, i.e., an overly strong demonic force of otherworldly origin, which the weak personality cannot cope with. Hillman professes a primitivistic psychology (= the "acorn theory") which can be equated with pre-Christian notions of demoniac possession. If people take H. seriously, we would risk falling back on witch-hunts again. H. says:
"Finally, prevention of the demonic must be based in the invisible ground "above the world," transcending the very idea of prevention itself .... My notions of ritual suggest ways of respecting the power of the call. They suggest disciplines imbued with more-than-human values, whose rituals will be touched by beauty, transcendence, adventure, and death. Like cures like - again that old adage. We must go toward where the seed originates and attempt to follow its deepest intuitions. Society must have rituals of exorcism for protecting itself from the Bad Seed. Yet it must also have rituals of recognitions that give the demonic a place - other than prisons - as Athena found an honored place for the destructive, blood-angered Furies in the midst of civilized Athens" (Hillman, The Soul's Code, p.246).
This implies trying to come to terms with the daemon by reaching into the transcendent sphere with ritual enchantments. H. says:
"So long as our theories deny the daimon as instigator of human personality, and instead insists upon brain construction, societal conditions, behavioral mechanisms, genetic environments, the daimon will not go gently into obscurity" (Hillman, The Soul's Code, p.243).
H. dismisses the modern findings of psychology, such as the importance of the upbringing, genetic determination, et cetera, and nicknames these as "the parental fallacy" and a "Mother-myth." But H. overtly admits to his subjectivistic and unscientific stance:
"If we can so readily accept the Mother-myth, then why not another myth, a different myth, the Platonic one this book proposes? It cannot be the resistance to myth that makes us balk at the acorn theory, since we so gullibly swallow the myth of the Mother. The reason we resist the myth of the daimon, I believe, is that it comes clean. It is not disguised as empirical fact. It states itself openly as a myth" (Hillman, The Soul's Code).
"[archetypal psychology] starts neither in the physiology of the brain, the structure of language, the organization of society, nor the analysis of behaviour, but in the process of imagination..." (Hillman, Archetypal Psychology: A Brief Account, p.19 and Re-Visioning Psychology, xi.).
"A puer-inspired theory will also limp among the facts, even collapse when met with the questioning inquiries of so-called reality [...] an archetypal psychology is obliged to show its own mythical premises..." (Hillman, The Soul's Code, p.283).
Soul-making
H. incessantly combats the Jungian method of introversion. The world-creating capability of the mind, i.e., the idea that images painted by phantasy become autonomous and godlike, is called soul-making, using Hillman's vocabulary.
"The polytheistic analogy is both religious and not religious [...] The Gods are taken essentially, as foundations, so that psychology points beyond soul and can never be merely agnostic [...] The Gods are therefore the Gods of religion and not mere nomina, categories, devices ex machina. They are respected as powers and persons and creators of value [...] In archetypal psychology, Gods are imagined. They are approached through psychological methods of personifying, pathologizing, and psychologizing. They are formulated ambigiuously, as metaphors for modes of experience and as numinous borderline persons. They are cosmic perspectives in which the soul participates" (Hillman, Archetypal Psychology: A Brief Account, p.44-46).
"The autochtonous quality of images as independent of the subjective imagination which does the perceiving takes Casey's idea one step further [...] but then comes the awareness that images are independent of subjectivity and even of imagination itself as a mental activity." (Ibid, p.15)
This soul-making, allegedly, should not be confused with introversion:
"You make soul by living life, not by retreating from the world into the 'inner work' or beyond the world in spiritual disciplines and meditation...." (Hillman & Ventura, We've Had a Hundred Years of Psychotherapy..., p.50).
"[therapy,] by emphasizing the inner soul and ignoring the outer soul, supports the decline of the actual world" (Ibid. p.5).
H. regards the introverted standpoint as
life-denying. This is contrary to Jung who regarded the introverted life as
having the same validity as extraverted life.
Our conscious
abilities are not powerful enough to control reality. In the modern world we are
balancing on the edge of disaster. But there is a powerful faculty of wisdom
that we can turn to for guidance. The self has the powers of the complete psyche
at its disposal, including the age-old wisdom of the collective unconscious.
Hillman, however, rejects the notion of the self and introduces his so called
"psychological polytheism." He contends that Jung's notion of
integration of personality is an expression of Jung's monotheistic "theological
temperament" and professes instead the dissociation of personality. H.
says:
"By providing a divine background of personages and powers for each complex, it [a polytheistic psychology] would aim less at gathering them into a unity and more at integrating each fragment according to its own principle, giving each God [and Goddess] its due over that proportion of consciousness, that symptom, complex, fantasy which calls for an archetypal background. It would accept the multiplicity of voices...without insisting upon unifying them into one figure, and accept too the dissociation process into diversity as equal in value to the coagulation process into unity. The pagan Gods and Goddesses would be restored to the psychological domain" (James Hillman. "Psychology: Monotheistic or Polytheistic?" p.197).
This, of course, is hardly advisable when treating psychic illnesses since neurosis and psychosis are expressions of dissociation of personality. There is one certain way of achieving healing of the world and personality. This is getting to the source of wisdom, i.e., going inwards towards the unity of being - the self. More extraversion in today's world, according to Hillman's agenda, is by no means advisable since peoples' conscious abilities will hardly be able to cope with the situation. Consciousness might be heading in the wrong direction. By turning inwards to the anima mundi the individual will be given a voice which is effective in reshaping the world outside. Otherwise, people will only have at their disposal the old truths and the old tools of collective consciousness. These are not efficacious anymore. Openness to the collective unconscious will furnish people with a picture of the future and the problems at hand. But without the wisdom of the self we travel blindfolded into the future. In these days this is quite dangerous. According to Jung, poisonous collective ideas are always compensated for, within the unconscious of the individual. Thus, one can never exclude the individual psychology when dealing with collective notions. Contrary to what H. says, one can never heal and correct the collective consciousness if one doesn't look into the unconscious of the individual. This is because the compensatory contents emerge from the unconscious of the individual. The healing power emerges, firstly, in the individual by way of integration of the unconscious and, secondly, by the subsequent dispersal of compensatory ideas and images (in conscious differentiated form) in the collective consciousness. Hence, Hillman's repudiation of the method of introversion is counterproductive.
This tendency of making a goddess out of the anima mundi derives from the notion that Jungian psychology will alienate people from the world. By removing the meaning and truth from the psyche and objectifying it in an animistic manner, H. thinks that people will look outwards and treat the world as a wonderful goddess. This ought to be counterproductive. It is a misunderstanding to look upon introversion as a threat to society, i.e., to infer that people would not engage in the necessities of society. Only extraverted jetsetters would overcompensate their extraversion and superficiality by suddenly becoming world-denying Zen monks. Jung argued against making gods and goddesses out of the unconscious figures (cf., "Two Essays.." par. 395). Introversion is not the same as regression. Introversion does not generate alienated individuals who don't care for the world and other people. Introversion is necessary tool in learning people to know themselves. In this way alienation is overcome and people will be able to adapt to the world. In the unconscious they will find the key to the future. So, despite what Hillman says, introversion is actually a remedy against alienation.
The
aesthetic paradigm
Quite contrary to what H. infers, Jung's
psychology is not about enforcing some ideas of goal-directedness onto the
patient, e.g, "the anima must be integrated," et cetera. Jung
emphasizes that it's necessary to look at the compensating contents within the
unconscious. If the unconscious is not friendly towards starting analysis in the
traditional form, it must be acknowledged. For instance, if a patient needs to
lie on the beach for a while since he is a workaholic, then it's necessary to
listen to the unconscious and not force some rigid conceptions on the patient.
The unconscious compensates the conscious standpoint - this is the key
sentence to the understanding of analytical psychology. Comparatively, Hillman's
psychology must be branded as dogmatic. His psychology engenders an
overestimation of the psychic images. This would be typical for the puer
aeternus who has a hard time adapting to everyday reality. In The Soul's
Code H. speaks about the artistic demon in each of us and how we must try to
find beauty around us, trying to love what we see. But this is nothing new. This
is the well-known conception of the artist and the poet. Western society has
always swarmed with these people who have a subjectivistic and romantic view of
the world. Many of them continue all their life to live as puers,
sitting under the oak tree, writing poetry. This is not wrong provided that it
is done in unison with the unconscious. However, in Jungian psychology there
exist no patent truths. One must always regard the unconscious as a compensating
force and one must approach life unbiased and see what the unconscious has
prepared beforehand. Hillman shuns this apprehensive attitude towards the
unconscious and, instead, builds a dogma out of a specific case; the aesthetic
conception. But this is merely the remedy in special cases and, perhaps, during
a specific time within an individual's lifetime. Hillman's approach is dogmatic,
something that Jung strongly rejects. In fact, Hillman's notions are politically
quite threatening and are close to the views of Josef (Georg)
"The calling from the eternal world demands that this world here be turned upside down, to restore its nearness to the moon; lunacy, love, poetics" (Hillman, The Soul's Code, p.282).
Consequently, Hillman's notion of a poetic basis of mind, which looks upon everything with the eyes of imagination, is, potentially, quite evil. It is an unscientific viewpoint wherein all world pictures and human actions are expressions of subjective phantasies. We live in a big phantasmagoria, so to speak. This is alluring to the artistic personality. The fanatic artist wants to create a phantasy world of his own rather than relating to objective, grey reality. Actually, Hillman wants to take his archetypal psychology "out on the street" and make it a collective dogma. Every man should become a poet who creates a phantasy-world for himself and thus make the world "beautiful and pleasant." This was actually the case during the Third Reich. Among the Nazi bigwigs were many artists who had thorougly subjectivistic views of the world. The new world they wanted to create comprised of a beautiful aryan race, grand architecture in "Ceausescu" style, strange pagan rituals with elements from Norse mythology and freemasonry, et cetera.
Animism
Hillman's view that there exists a world-soul independent of the human soul represents a regression to pre-Christian conceptions that entail magical means of healing, causing the rain to arrive by rain dance, et cetera. This is an ancient religious attitude known as animism and, of course, is not compatible with modern science. It is puzzling that a person like Hillman, who accuses Jung of "metaphysicism," himself subscribes to such archaic notions. If people would regress to such ideas, the consequences might be very tragic. We would then be back into a childish relation to the world and this would defeat Jung's notion of introversion as the key to the healing of collective consciousness. Preventing drought by rain dance is much less effective than Jung's notion of introversion. Introversion is a mature attitude because one realizes that I myself have a responsibility to integrate the compensating contents arriving from the unconscious. If more people would follow this call, we could prevent drought by becoming more responsible towards the environment. We would learn to foresee complicated problems and to spread the compensatory images and ideas within the collective consciousness. This, in turn, would cause more people to embrace the new ideas of environmental foreseeing.
"Archetypal psychology" represents a regression to naive animism and tragically removes the ascendancy of the psyche. With its unscientific conceptions it occasions a primitive moral. H. belongs to an outdated philosophical school of subjectivism. He tells us to view the world as having an independent soul akin to the human soul. But in fact, the anima mundi is within every individual. We all contain eternity. Jungian psychology advocates the ascendancy of the psyche. Anima mundi must be understood as a psychic reality. If we choose to reify it, assert that it's a fog that surrounds the earth, then this is due to a projection. The anima mundi is, by medieval alchemists, equated with Mercurius. Mercurius is a psychic reality, he is the archetype of the unconscious. If we choose to regard the anima mundi as a fully independent reality, then we make a goddess out of her. This is equal to a regression to paganism. People still find it so hard to digest, the fact that they themselves contain all that there is to long for. Instead they are enchanted with modernized pagan ideas. In this obfuscatory way the Jungian notions are retained, but at the same time the moral obligation of coping with the inner reality is avoided. It is modern paganism in Jungian terms. This is a regression to the pagan belief of spirits that we today regard as psychological projections. The modern view, on the other hand, entails an exaltation of the psyche.
If we instead would go along with classical Jungian psychology, and claim the existence of the psyche as a largely independent reality and that the psyche of the individual contains the spirit of the world, then we speak in favour of the psyche. Then the psyche receives its true status. If people were to realize that the psyche is quite real and immeasurable, then they would cease travelling fourteen times round the earth, looking for theanima mundi. The medieval alchemists incessantly explained that the prima materia can be found directly outside your doorstep. The prima materia is said to contain this anima mundi. So already during the Middle Ages, people intuitively understood the reality of the psyche.
Phenomenology
Today there is a strong tendency towards making Jungian psychology a generic name for quite different systems that, although they at the first glance look related (because of similar terminology), their kernels are completely dissimilar. The removal of the concept of the innate archetype strikes at the kernel of Jung's psychology. Correspondingly, this would be like an economist would invent a new "capitalistic" economic system which entails removing the free price-fixing. But removing the free price-fixing and replacing it with the institutionalizing of this function is known as communism.
In a similar way, Hillman's psychology points in a completely different direction than Jung's psychology. The assertion that the archetype and the unconscious, and every phenomenon whatsoever, can be fixated by the conscious mind, entails that the conscious mind is designed to transcend the whole of cosmos. So when Hillman asserts that Jung is metaphysical, it is actually the other way round. Hillman has a cosmos-enveloping view of the brain and its conscious mind. One could argue that the Hillmanians reduce everything to images, but the reduction of any content to an image necessitates Hillman's inference that the goal is simply to make conscious what is existent in the unconscious. However, according to analytical psychology the complete man is both conscious and unconscious, i.e., a balance is to be attained. The conscious mind cannot harbour every opposite of the psyche and the cosmos. Since the conscious mind is not designed to do this (it's not God) the goal is, rather, to attain some sense of unity of consciousness and unconsciousness by way of the Jungian concept of the transcendent function. In fact, in this respect Jungian psychology is akin to the Eastern philosophies of Taoism and Zen Buddhism, which advocate some sort of "conscious unconsciousness." To exemplify, in the Zen disciplines of the tea ceremony and archery the adept performs unconsciously with great prowess, almost like a cat. By conscious determination he has acquired a unification of consciousness and unconscious so that he can perform without hesitation since he doesn't look at his movements with a conscious eye "above" himself, so to speak. At these "holy moments" he experiences this unity which is, in some sense, akin to a Jungian ideal. This is the collected wisdom of the world, which Hillman contests.
The
Puer Aeternus
Hillman's psychology, which is a version of
the aesthetic paradigm, is attractive to people who lack the moral power to come
to terms with the demands of neither the outer life, nor the unconscious.
Withdrawing the projections is a painful process because it entails losing
momentum and the meaning of life. But, according to Jung, it is necessary to
withdraw the projections even if it leads to nigredo which is a kind of
psychic death. Out of this is born a new feeling for the world in albedo.
When Gautama Buddha had withdrawn all his projections and was ready to enter
nirvana, he was surprised to find that there had emerged a new kind of
love towards the world.
"I tied the acorn theory with its founding image and tied the founding image yet further on to a mythical configuration called puer eternus" (Hillman, The Soul's Code, p.285).
"The acorn theory of biography seems to have sprung from and to speak the language of the puer eternus, the archetype of the eternal youth who embodies a timeless, everlasting, yet fragile connection with the invisible otherworld..." (Ibid. p.281).
"A puer-inspired theory will also limp among the facts, even collapse when met with the questioning inquiries of so-called reality, which is the position taken by the puer's classical opponent, the gray-faced king of Saturn figure, old hardnose, hardass, hardhat. He wants statistics, examples, studies, not images, visions, stories [...] This kind of self-reflection belongs to psychological method. Unlike the methods used by other disciplines when positing their ideas, an archetypal psychology is obliged to show its own mythical premises, how it is begging its first question, in this case the myth of the acorn" (Ibid. p.283).
H. admits that his views are phantasies and that they cannot be substantiated by facts. However, he forestalls any criticism, in a rather childish puer aeternus manner, by saying that any opponents to his subjective views are to be regarded as "hardasses." Surprisingly, he expects his own phantasies, no doubt derived from his own personal temperament, to be adopted as truths. Must other people then be regarded as "hardasses" if they define their own subjectivistic phantasies and thereby go against Hillman?
"In former times, despite some dissenting opinion and the influence of Aristotle, it was not too difficult to understand Plato's conception of the Idea as supraordinate and pre-existent to all phenomena. "Archetype," far from being a modern term, was already in use before the time of St. Augustine, and was synonymous with "Idea" in the Platonic usage. When the Corpus Hermeticum", which probably dates from the third century, describes God as [...], the 'archetypal light,' it expresses the idea that he is the prototype of all light; that is to say, pre-existent and supraordinate to the phenomenon "light."
Were I a philosopher, I should continue this Platonic strain and say: Somewhere, in "a place beyond the skies," there exists a prototype or primordial image of the mother that is pre-existent and supraordinate to all phenomena in which the "maternal," in the broadest sense of the term, is manifest. But I am an empiricist, not a philosopher; I cannot let myself presuppose that my peculiar temperament, my own attitude to intellectual problems, is universally valid. Apparently this is an assumption in which only the philosopher may indulge, who always takes it for granted that his own disposition and attitude are universal, and will not recognize the fact, if he can avoid it, that his "personal equation" conditions his philosophy." (C. G. Jung, "The Archetypes and The Collective Unconscious" par.149).
So here Jung repudiates the "Platonic" interpretation of the archetype, and he rejects the "philosophers" who think in this subjectivistic way. Jung identifies himself as an empiricist, and, according to him, the archetypes belong in the psyche.
In this connection another author deserves
mentioning. This is
Vampirism
Hillman rejects Jungian psychoanalysis. He even wrote a book called "We've Had A Hundred Years of Psychotherapy and the World's Getting Worse." He says that we must stop talking about growing up and instead grow down (a well-known puer aeternus device). H. says that other psychologists are deterministic, i.e., that they always talk about the inborn qualities that shape the future of the individual, attaching weight to the acquired complexes from childhood, et cetera. Hillman abolishes all this and wants to exchange it with imagination. Allegedly, the individual ought to live by creating phantasies and avoid the moral trial of strength involving the encounter with the unconscious. H. takes every chance to denounce Christianity. He wants to revert to a deified world; a polytheistic world, and rejects the psychological necessity of the growth of ego consciousness. The individual should remain a child, a collective being. H. says:
"when the idea of progress through hierarchical stages is suspended, there will be more tolerance for the non-growth, non-upward and non-ordered components of the psyche....We may then discover that many of the judgements which have previously been called psychological were rather theological" (Hillman, Psychology: Monotheistic or Polytheistic?, p.198).
"when the monotheism of consciousness is no longer able to deny the existence of fragmentary autonomous systems and no longer able to deal with our actual psychic state, then there arises the fantasy of returning to Greek polytheism" (Hillman, Re-Visioning Psychology, p.27).
"Growth offers salvation from what developmental theory has dogmatically declared to be our basic nature, the helpless and hope-filled state called 'my inner child'...Growth equals secular salvation" (Hillman & Ventura, Hundred Years of Psychotherapy, p.70).
However, individuation, in the true Jungian
sense, hinges upon detachment from collective consciousness. From this follows
also a freeing from the collective shadow that today, figuratively speaking, can
be envisaged as a vampire; an imitator of life who has no inner life
source but must derive energy (blood) from the surrounding, including other
people. The popularity and topicality of the vampire-myth is due to the actual
nature of the collective shadow of today. The attitude of life-imitation is
championed by
"..."case material", "ego development", "psychotherapy", even "animus-ridden" and "negative mother" -- die on our lips. We can no longer give them belief; they have lost conviction; they no longer are speech that carries soul. This language is dead [...] Because of its own language, psychology becomes anti therapeutic, an instrument of a new philistinism called 'community mental health,' spreading its kind of mental illness [...] Where is dialogue? Especially, where is psychological dialogue? We long for psychic experiences yet doubt psychological language. What has happened to this language of psychology in a time of superb communication techniques and democratic education? Why has its language game departed from the soul's play? We no longer believe that psychology speaks for the soul" (Hillman, The Myth of Analysis).
Allegedly, according to Hillman, one must draw
energy from words and exterior reality, and if one doesn't get a "kick"
from them, then they are useless. If one cannot extract feeling from Jung's or
The
shadow of the Puer Aeternus
Let's look closer at the shadow of the puer
aeternus, using a mythological language. Drawing on the myth of the vampire, we
can deduce that such a person does not lead a true life. His soul is dead since
he has denounced introversion, i.e., life within. Instead he goes along
imitating life like an actor, painting a subjectivistic worldview. Such
imitators of spiritual life go along with Hillman and denounce introversion as
narcissism. Instead they endeavour to make a religion out of the whole
outer reality. The vampire is a collectivistic mass-man, always prone to
harassment as soon as he detects any sign of individual consciousness. He
elevates poetry to true reality and even relates to the words of Jungian authors
as if they were poetry and never quite understand what analytical psychology is
all about. He wants psychology to be an object of religious fervour, and if the
psychological terms have lost their religious meaning, then they are of no
value. Along with sincere people, Christianity has earlier harboured
spirit-imitators of this kind, quenching their blood-thirst by allowing them the
blood of Christ in the Eucharist. But as Christianity lost its grip, the
spirit-imitators have, so to speak, poured out of the Church and started making
the whole of reality into a religious space; a place for imitation of life as a
whole. This is vampirism, the devilish evil which the Church has
hitherto held at bay. Hillman advocates making the whole outer world a religious
space, painting it in subjectivistic colours and imitating life like an actor.
Although Hillman is not particularly important, his ideas are compelling to the
life-imitator who in these ideas finds a way to evade the moral obligations
bestowed upon the individual by life itself.
The problem of collective
psychology is immense today. By way of introversion we can learn to really
understand and appreciate other people. The life-imitator, however, rejects true
introversion. The sun of collective consciousness shines so strongly so that
most people have no notion of any alternative to the imitated life. They see any
expression of individual consciousness as pathological. The followers of this
evil antiquated paradigm become spiritual dwarfs as their individuation process
is definitively halted. And any person following the true path of individuation
is immediately identified as an outcast. That's why the path of individuation is
so cumbersome in the modern narcissistic era.
Conclusion
Hillman's psychology should not be referred to as Jungian psychology, nor as post-Jungian psychology. One should give things their proper names, otherwise the whole matter becomes obscured and students are bewildered. H. subscribes to a completely different paradigm which is more akin to religious dualistic conceptions, drawing on teleology, while Jung is (or tries to be) scientifically empirical. Jung and Hillman point in different directions which lead to completely different views of man and, thence, to different kinds of morality. Hillman's philosophy is the heavily criticized and completely outdated subjectivistic philosophy. H. rejects the scientific method, instead advocating a method of subjectivistic phantasy, encouraging people to remain in an immature puer aeternus relationship to the world. Despite Hillman's repudiation of the scientific paradigm, it has nevertheless proven effective when curing people with traditional psychotherapy, together with, in some cases, psychopharmacologic drugs. Although there exists a need for a renewal of today's scientific paradigm, it would be like jumping out of the frying-pan into the fire if we were to adopt Hillman's antiquated polytheism. What is really needed today is the revelation of a new archetype, not an antiquated one.
~~~~~~~~~~~~
© Mats Winther 1999
See also my
critique of post-Jungian psychologists Edinger and
Romanyshyn.
