Reading "The Soul's Code - In Search of Character and Calling"
by James Hillman and quite enjoying it.
He is making the point that psychology (along with existentialists
and shallow religions) has put the individual in a state of
victimhood and lack of meaning. He seems to despise the
whole field pretty much, and says that psychology demands that
the matters of heart are their domain, but at the same time
have side-stepped the whole question of what human heart is in
a poetically psychological sense.
It is an interesting read, and considers many of the topics I
personally have been moaning about. Hillman seems a strange
character. He talks more like Jung than any Jungians I've heard,
but at the same time keeps his distance to Jung. He also seems
rather post-modern with his deconstruction of the whole of the
statistically oriented social sciences, but at the same time he
doesn't pull it down to "nothing matters" like the
deconstructionists often do, but rather pulls it back all the way
to Plato and the Myth of Er.
Hillman wants to paint a picture of an individual that is being
pushed forward by their daimon, sort of a guardian angel, but not
as angelic as you might think. This angel is working for your
inner purpose. Purpose that might be all too much for your
limited existance. The angel doesn't care. It is inhuman and
otherworldly. It pushes you along, it makes you ill if you refuse,
it may stretch you between heaven and hell, unable to go either
direction. It protects you and may literally kill for you. All
this you have agreed to in the realm before birth. Then you forgot
you made this deal.
This of course is a myth, but not a dead myth. I think Hillman
is trying to resurrect forgotten myths that he sees could bring
some vitality to the nihilistic culture.
It's exciting to find a challenging niche like this. I just began
the book, and he seems to have a lot more.
