The Hillman collection is predominately comprised of manuscripts, drafts, research files, and publishing agreements for most of his books, essays, lectures, and collaborative volumes. It also includes unpublished lectures and writings, as well as audio versions of seminars and lectures, and correspondence with friends, scholars, colleagues, and artists.

James Hillman (1926-2011) was an American psychologist, among the founding thinkers of archetypal psychology, and a leading scholar in Jungian and post-Jungian thought. Born in Atlantic City in 1926, Hillman served in the US Navy Hospital Corps for two years during World War II. Following the end of the war, he attended the Sorbonne in Paris, and Trinity College in Dublin. Hillman then received his Doctoral Degree from the University of Zürich and completed his training as a Jungian analyst in 1959 at the C. G. Jung Institute Zürich, becoming the Institute’s Director of Studies the same year, a position he held for ten years (1959-1969).