Jeremy Griffith’s FREEDOM: The End of the Human Condition attempts something much larger than an ordinary theory of personality or psychological disorder. Griffith proposes a biological explanation for what he regards as the central contradiction of human existence.
If one world can possess an anima, it then follows, that a plurality of worlds may also possess a soul appropriate to their collective form. And that in addition, all objects/structures and visible aspects of that universe are part of that universal soul
The first ten entries established the foundations of archetypal psychology. Those concepts describe how psyche presents itself and how psychological attention may respond. Part Two follows the consequences.
This glossary is not arranged alphabetically. It unfolds conceptually. The sequence begins with soul, the perspective from which Hillman believes psychology should proceed. Part I of II
James Hillman’s archetypal psychology presents the psyche as fundamentally plural, or or of multiple minds. Human beings do not possess only one psychological voice, value system or centre of intelligence.
The absolute democracy of the psyche is a constitutional arrangement in which every psychological part possesses equal sovereignty, every part governs its own proper domain, and no system-wide action can be authorised unless every participating authority consents.
James Hillman’s archetypal psychology and Richard Schwartz’s Internal Family Systems therapy appear, at first sight, to describe remarkably similar psychological worlds.
James Hillman’s archetypal psychology is easier to misunderstand than to apply. Its vocabulary – gods, soul, images, underworld, personification and psychological polytheism, can create the impression that the practitioner’s task is to identify mythological figures concealed inside dreams and symptoms.
James Hillman’s archetypal psychology arose from Carl Gustav Jung’s analytical psychology, but it should not be understood merely as a later version of Jungian theory. Hillman retained some of Jung’s most radical propositions while questioning the conceptual structure Jung had built around them.
James Hillman was an American psychologist, Jungian analyst, writer, teacher and cultural critic whose work challenged many of the assumptions underlying twentieth-century psychology. He is principally associated with archetypal psychology, a post-Jungian approach that places imagination, metaphor, mythology and what Hillman called “soul” at the centre of psychological inquiry.