Uniform Edition of the Writings of
James Hillman, Volume 6: Mythic Figures, 2007
Joanne H. Stroud
Introduction
James Hillman
brings an uncommon acuity to the current study of mythology. He explores how ancient myths can
provide insights for present day issues: “I am attempting to show how antiquity
can be relevant to the life of the psyche and how psychic life can vivify
antiquity.” The focus of these papers, then, is not to offer a better
understanding of the classical, academic structures of myths. Nor is the
intention to provide personal help that these larger-than-life archetypes can
offer as models for personal development, or, on the other hand, to warn against
shadow characteristics that cause obsessions and behavior problems. Instead,
Hillman links myth to history and daily events. He reminds us of deeper
connections: “Besides our aim of tying a human mess to a wider myth, we are
attempting to connect present experience to historical culture.”
The primary reason, Hillman explains, that
Greek mythology has relevance, especially for Westerners, is: “They [the
Greeks] had no depth psychology and psychopathology such as we have. They had
myths. And we have no myths as such — instead, depth psychology and psychopathology.
Therefore, … psychology shows myths in modern dress and myths show our depth psychology
in ancient dress.”
Hillman teaches his readers how to regain the
mythical perspective so lacking in our current all-too-literal approach to both
friends and foes — black versus white, good guys versus evil empire. We fail to
see our own shadows while refusing to see a stranger’s virtue. Hillman applies
the wisdom of myth which demonstrates that what we consider positive casts shadows
just as the darkness has its redeeming light. Hillman’s work demonstrates the
verity of this principle, which is like the image of the curving,
interpenetrating symbol of Yin and Yang in Chinese thought.
Hillman asks: “Have the gods truly fled?” Or
are we just not able to see them? His implication is that they are still there
for us to see. Other eras could rely on original myths to ground both the
perspective of the individual and national ambitions. In the narratives of myth
we are shown the unexpected, unforeseen consequences of even the most noble
intentions, because “each god is a way in which we are shadowed.”
In most past and some present cultures, myths
provide explanations for the mysterious. With most of the gods of mythology
dead or unavailable to us, we have insufficient containers for the numinous.
Hillman proposes that “Mysteries are best accounted for by myths.” Without these
supporting vessels, we begin substituting for the worship of the gods the
worship of fame — film personalities, athletes, and rock stars. In America in
particular, we have developed to a considerable degree the craven adulation of
transitory celebrity.
Another of our current excesses is the one of
excess itself, too much of everything. We need to recall that the most famous
of the Titans (the predecessors of the Olympians) was Prometheus, who not only
gave mortals the gift of fire but also taught them to circumvent the allegiance
of the gods. Our society has become subject to the dangers of an expanded Prometheism,
of a kind of titanism unknown in past ages. In “… And Huge Is Ugly,” an appropriate
title, Hillman points out: “We are not Titans nor can we become titanic — only when
the gods are absent can titanism return to earth.” He follows with this
question: “Do you see why we must keep the gods alive and well? Small is
beautiful requires a prior step: the return of the gods.”
During the twentieth century, beauty almost
became a bad word, or at least one that we were embarrassed to use. As a result
of the scientific revolution, even the body became an object to be perfected.
Hillman wryly remarks: “Remember, social Darwinism says survival of the fittest, not of the
loveliest.” Like Sir Herbert Read, the English art critic who wrote an
important analysis of the way in which beauty has disappeared in art, Hillman
addresses the loss of that quality in our society in general. His chapter on
“Pink Madness or Why Does Aphrodite Drive Men Crazy With Pornography?” helps to
explain why we have so little of beauty and so much pornography in our culture.
It began, like all splits in the personality that we blame on Descartes, with
the wedge between head and heart, or between the thinking brain and natural instincts.
It is a split that has yet to be healed. Hillman prompts us to remember: “Pornography
is where the pagan gods have fallen and how they force themselves back into our
minds.”
In the chapter on “War, Arms, Rams, Mars,”
Hillman speaks of the power of Mars, which should not be forgotten. In the same
instance he says that “we have lost the overwhelming essence of war, now more
of a nightly news event than any kind of heroic undertaking.” He includes this
provocative warning: “We do not know much nowadays about imagining divinities.
We have lost the angelic imagination and its
angelic protection. It has disappeared from all curricula — theological,
philosophical, aesthetic. That loss may be more of a danger than either war or
apocalypse because that loss results in literalism, the cause of both.”
Even though “psychoanalysts are the
myth-preservers in our culture,” Hillman brings to our attention the shocking
fact that the very practice of psychoanalysis is based on what he calls “the
myth in the method.” By this he means that the founding myth of psychoanalysis
can hold its practitioners in the binds of its inevitable end. Hilllman’s
psychoanalysis of psychoanalysis is instructive. While Freud highlighted the
myth of Oedipus as a way into understanding the central dynamic in family
relationships, the Greek tragedy bearing his name also gives insights into the
life of the city. Self-knowledge, to the extent possible, is a noble
achievement, but “To find one’s father and the truth of oneself is not enough.”
The whole emphasis in analysis is on a search for identity, the uncovering of
one’s early life with parents, which limits the psychoanalytical method to an
ongoing Oedipal approach. Hillman further declares: “Whatever
myths may operate
in the psyche, whatever contents we might disclose, as long as our method
remains search
for self, these
other tales will yield only Oedipal results because we turn to them with the
same old intention.” And therefore this method of attempting cure is doomed to
recurring tragedy. Even though it sounds as if there is no way out, for
Sophocles, the tragedian, the city, “the polis, is central to the play.”
Hillman shows us this pathway: we have learned that substituting another myth
or any number of myths will only lead back to Oedipus because of the analytical
method. Fortunately, the very same myth offers us a way forward. Freud stops in
Thebes, with the Tyrannus. Sophocles dreams the myth along, as Jung advised us
all to do. Let us move then from Freud to Jung by going with Oedipus to
Colonus, the second Oedipus, written by Sophocles in his nineties, soon before
his death in this same city, Colonus.
Whether as a psychologist, or equally as a
participant in any exchange, we are called to examine our culpability, our
blindness to the contributing part we play. It is not an acceptable excuse to
be unaware. However, even this move toward awakened consciousness is not the ultimate
one. With increased self-knowledge, the movement is back into the world.
Hillman reminds us of what Jung always says: that the rocky path of
individuation leads to the return to the world, where our talents ultimately
need to be engaged. Hillman’s final word: “Unless we let go of subjectivism,
how will the soul ever return to the world, to things as they are so that they
receive the attention they need from us? There are other pursuits, other
urgencies than those of Self. What is it to make beauty? To serve my city? Be a
friend, die with dignity, love the world, remember the gods?”
In the chapter on Orpheus, Hillman reveals an
abiding interest in the French philosopher Gaston Bachelard, who could expand
and bring together multiple associations for even a simple image. Hillman
speaks of an “‘Orpheus complex,’ to use the language of Gaston Bachelard,” that
connects or disconnects us to the environment. Hillman, always concerned with
words, remarks that Orpheus “may be present in their [environmentalists’]
ideals, their practices, but lacking in their language.” In this case, “If
environmentalism does not awaken nature’s sublimity, its beauty and its terror,
if rocks and trees do not speak, they themselves become mere objects, not
ensouled subjects with whom the human is bound.”
I cannot resist adding that the Dallas
Institute of Humanities and Culture, of which Hillman is
a Founding Fellow,
is engaged in a twenty-five-year love affair with Gaston Bachelard, having sponsored
the translation of seven, soon to be eight, of his works from French to
English. Hillman was also a keynote speaker and major contributor at two
conferences on Bachelard at the Institute.
Hillman succeeds here, as usual, in provoking
the reader’s imagination. With his multifaceted
perspective and
his metaphysical wit, his work has influenced
a number of thinkers and spawned an important school of thought.