Considered to be the world’s foremost post-Jungian thinker, James Hillman is known as the founder of archetypal psychology and the author of more than twenty books, including the bestselling title The Soul’s Code. In The Making of a Psychologist, we follow Hillman from his youth in the heyday of Atlantic City, through post-war Paris and Dublin, travels in Africa and Kashmir, and onward to Zurich and the Jung Institute, which appointed him its first director of studies in 1960. This first of a two-volume authorized biography is the result of hundreds of hours of interviews with Hillman and others over a seven-year period. Discover how Hillman’s unique psychology was forged through his life experiences and found its basis in the imagination, aesthetics, a return to the Greek pantheon, and the importance of “soul-making,” and gain a better understanding of the mind of one of the most brilliant psychologists of the twentieth century.

“[An] acute and powerful vision . . . offers a renaissance of humane values.”—Thomas Moore, author of Care of the Soul and The Re-Enchantment of Everyday Life Plato called it “daimon,” the Romans “genius,” the Christians “guardian angel”; today we use such terms as “heart,” “spirit,” and “soul.” While philosophers and psychologists from Plato to Jung have studied and debated the fundamental essence of our individuality, our modern culture refuses to accept that a unique soul guides each of us from birth, shaping the course of our lives. In this extraordinary bestseller, James Hillman presents a brilliant vision of our selves, and an exciting approach to the mystery at the center of every life that asks, “What is it, in my heart, that I must do, be, and have? And why?” Drawing on the biographies of figures such as Ella Fitzgerald and Mohandas K. Gandhi, Hillman argues that character is fate, that there is more to each individual than can be explained by genetics and environment. The result is a reasoned and powerful road map to understanding our true nature and discovering an eye-opening array of choices—from the way we raise our children to our career paths to our social and personal commitments to achieving excellence in our time. Praise for The Soul’s Code “Champions a glorious sort of rugged individualism that, with the help of an inner daimon (or guardian angel), can triumph against all odds.”—The Washington Post Book World “[A] brilliant, absorbing work . . . Hillman dares us to believe that we are each meant to be here, that we are needed by the world around us.”—Publishers Weekly

This groundbreaking classic explores the necessity of connections between our life and soul and developing the main lines of the soul-making process.

In his bestselling The Soul's Code, James Hillman restored passion and meaning to the concept of identity, arguing that each of us is born with an innate character, the "daimon" or "spirit" that calls us to what we are meant to be. Now, in The Force of Character, Hillman brings the idea of character full circle, offering a revolutionary new vision of life's most feared and misunderstood chapter: old age. "Aging is no accident," Hillman writes. "It is necessary to the human condition, intended by the soul." We become more characteristic of who we are simply by lasting into later years; the older we become, the more our true natures emerge. Thus the final years have a very important purpose: the fulfillment and confirmation of one's character. Contrary to the current genetic determinism that sees increased longevity as a wasted aberrance created by civilization, The Force of Character presents an explosive new thesis: The changes of old age, even the debilitating ones, have purposes and values organized by the psyche. Memory for recent events may falter, offering more place for long-term recollections. A heart condition in later life brings an opportunity to remove blockages from constricted relationships, while changes in sleep patterns allow the old to experience the profound elements of nighttime that we usually overlook. As Hillman says, "Aging makes metaphors of biology." In this empowering and original work, James Hillman resurrects the ancient, widespread, and socially effective idea of the old person as "ancestor," a model for the young, the bearer of a society's cultural memory and traditions. America disregards old people who aren't young-acting and young-looking. We don't realize that "oldness" is an archetypal state of being that can add value and luster to things we treasure, places we revere, and people's character. When we open our imaginations to the idea of the ancestor, aging can free us from convention and transform us into a force of nature, releasing our deepest beliefs for the benefit of society. For all who read it, The Force of Character will be a seminal, life-affirming experience.

Extraordinary, yet practical accounts of active imagination, writing, daily work, and symptoms in their relation with loving. The only biography of Hillman, the book also radically deconstructs the interview form itself.

James Hillman, who died in 2011 at the age of eighty-five, has been described by poet Robert Bly as “the most lively and original psychologist” of the twentieth century. Based on author Dick Russell’s interviews with Hillman and dozens of people who knew him, Volume Two of The Life and Ideas of James Hillman takes up Hillman’s mid-life when he set about returning psychology to its Soul-rich roots in Greek mythology and Renaissance esotericism. From his base teaching at Zurich’s Jung Institute, we follow Hillman’s growing international prominence as a maverick in the field, coinciding with his relationship and eventual marriage to Patricia Berry. They would be instrumental in formulating Archetypal Psychology, along with a group of young compatriots in what became known as Spring House. The new ideas taking shape moved psychology away from the dominant scientific/medical model with its focus on treating the isolated individual, expanding into the fertile realm of culture and the imagination. Amid prodigious writings and lectures, Hillman made mythology and even alchemy relevant to our times. Delivering the prestigious Terry Lectures at Yale and being nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, Hillman returned to America after living primarily in Europe for thirty years. To the surprise of many, he settled in Dallas and helped found an Institute of Humanities and Culture while taking up how to re-imagine city planning. Equally surprising was Hillman’s subsequent move to rural Connecticut, where he and Pat Berry resided in a nineteenth-century farmhouse. Starting in the mid-’80s, Hillman became a pioneering teacher in the mythopoetic men’s movement alongside Robert Bly and Michael Meade—where deep talk about fathers and sons and male-female relationships offered a new kind of group therapy, a cultural therapy. As Thomas Moore said of Hillman, he possessed a “genius for taking any theme and shedding serious fresh light on it.” Along the way, Hillman’s insights came to encompass all of the arts, a “poetic basis of mind” that connected him to many of the most influential artists and thinkers of the modern era.