You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
The Ideas of James Hillman offer a unique challenge for Jungian scholarship. Described enthusiastically by one of his followers as ‘the first original deviationist from the Jungian orthodoxy’ (AVENS 1, p. vii), his thought opens up the prospect of transcending the confines of Jung's formulations on psychology with which in a painstaking and even tortuous manner he had attempted to construct an essentially mythological image of man which was yet compatible with a scientifically based picture of reality. For rather than endeavouring to base psychology in a perspective which respects both science and mythology, both logos and mythos, Hillman wants to ‘re-vision’ psychology on the model of art and in the process reduce the logos point of view to a subset of the mythos (HILLMAN 8, p. 170; 10, p. 143; 6, p. xi).
My chief purpose in offering a critique of Hillman's ideas about dreams is to make a beginning to the process of trying to meet this challenge which Hillman's views make to Jung's original position. The dream theory is a good starting point for attempting to assess the merit of Hillman's revisions because the theory of dream interpretation is at the centre of Jung's network of psychological concepts. In many ways it is the pivot around which the whole Jungian outlook turns. The sort of modification which Hillman appears to advocate with respect to working with dreams is indicative of the radical departure that he makes from Jung's view. As Hillman's ideas evolve it is becoming increasingly clear that he is fated to be a neo-Jungian who is as divergent from Jung as Jung was from Freud.
But while my critique of Hillman will be from the point of view of a Jungian apologist defending Jung's views on working with dreams against the Hillman alternatives, it is also my intention to appreciate Hillman's positive contribution to Jungian thought. In seeing psychology on the model of art, Hillman is offering a new metaphor in terms of which to understand psychology. His work o