{"id":1091,"date":"2020-08-07T08:28:06","date_gmt":"2020-08-07T16:28:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ralockhart.com\/WP\/?p=1091"},"modified":"2020-08-07T08:28:11","modified_gmt":"2020-08-07T16:28:11","slug":"remembering-jim","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ralockhart.com\/WP\/remembering-jim\/","title":{"rendered":"Remembering Jim"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

My first encounter with the work of James Hillman was in 1962. I was completing my Master\u2019s Degree in human psychophysiology and had stumbled across his book, Emotion: A Comprehensive Phenomenology of Theories and Their Meanings for Therapy. First published in 1960, it was Hillman’s doctoral dissertation at the University of Zurich. I was familiar with the literature on emotion in various disciplines, but I had never encountered the voice I heard in these pages. What was it? I couldn\u2019t quite get it, but I did know I wanted to see more work by this author. The next work I found was his essay in Harvest,on \u201cFriends and Enemies,\u201d in 1962, and the next was \u201cOn Betrayal,\u201d in Spring, in 1965. By this time, I had studied a good bit of Jung, and entered analysis in 1964. Through the 60s and early 70s, I eagerly devoured Jung\u2019s work as well as Hillman\u2019s and taught both at university and in the analyst training program. It was in 1975, that I encountered Hillman\u2019s Re-Visioning Psychology. It was clear to me that keeping Jung and Hillman close together would be a feat. By this time I had become a Jungian Analyst, and had begun a friendship with Jim. He accepted my essay, \u201dCancer in Myth and Dream,\u201d for publication in Spring in 1977, and he suggested that Spring publish a collection of my essays which was published in 1983 (Words As Eggs). In 1978, I became director of analyst training in Los Angeles, a position he had held in Zurich. Then came his book, The Dream and the Underworld, published in 1979, and it caused the most argumentative time between us. It is a profound work as is much of Hillman\u2019s work to be sure. I delighted in the way his mind worked and his quick silvered tongue. But this book caused me to take issue with him. The main issue in my mind was that the relativity of \u201cseeing through\u201d everything left no solid ground for ethical action in the world–a feature of Jung\u2019s psychology that to me was paramount and essential.\u201d I told him that he left no bridge to the upper world. Our differing views went on for some time. Then early in 1982, Jim sent me a copy of his Eranos lecture, \u201cThe Thought of the Heart.\u201d I include a picture of this. On it he had written, \u201cFor Russell, returning to this side of the \u2018bridge,\u2019 glad you are close to Eureka.\u201d I had moved from Los Angeles to a redwood forest just north of Eureka, California. To get clear on Hillman\u2019s reference to bridge take note that the first chapter in The Dream and the Underworld is entitled \u201cBridge.\u201d In sending \u201cThought of the Heart,\u201d Hillman is letting me know that he was\u201creturning to this side of the bridge.\u201d His reference to Eureka was not just to the place. I sorely miss him, but his spirit lives on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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My first encounter with the work of James Hillman was in 1962. I was completing my Master\u2019s Degree in human psychophysiology and had stumbled across his book, Emotion: A Comprehensive Phenomenology of Theories and Their Meanings for Therapy. First published in 1960, it was Hillman’s doctoral dissertation at the University of Zurich. I was familiar […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1091","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-coming-soon"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ralockhart.com\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1091","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ralockhart.com\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ralockhart.com\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ralockhart.com\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ralockhart.com\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1091"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.ralockhart.com\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1091\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1093,"href":"https:\/\/www.ralockhart.com\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1091\/revisions\/1093"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ralockhart.com\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1091"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ralockhart.com\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1091"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ralockhart.com\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1091"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}