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Title: James Hillman Collection
Physical Description: 140 linear feet (231 boxes)
Repository:
Opus Archives and Research Center
Santa Barbara, CA 93108
Language of Material:
English
Biography/Organization History
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).
In 1970, Hillman became the editor of
Spring Journal, a
publication dedicated to psychology, philosophy, mythology, arts, humanities, and
cultural issues. Upon becoming the Dean of Graduate Studies at the University of
Dallas, he moved to the United States, and co-founded the Dallas Institute for
Humanities and Culture in 1978. He also held teaching positions at Yale University,
the University of Chicago, and Syracuse University.
Hillman published more than nineteen books, as well as volumes of essays, and
continued to be a prolific writer and sought after lecturer until his death in 2011.
In 1972 he delivered the esteemed Terry Lectures at Yale University. These lectures
became his groundbreaking book,
Re-Visioning Psychology
(1974), which was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize in 1975.The body of his work is
comprised of scholarly studies in several fields including psychology, philosophy,
mythology, art, and cultural studies. His book
The Soul’s
Code: In Search of Character and Calling
(1996) was on the New York Times
Best Sellers list for nearly a year. His works also include
The Myth of Analysis (1972),
Healing
Fiction
(1983),
The Dream and the Underworld
(1979),
The Force of Character (2000), and
Suicide and the Soul (1964). See the Opus Archives and
Research Center website for a
bibliography of Hillman’s works .
Throughout his work, Hillman criticized the literal, materialistic, and reductive
perspectives that often dominate the psychological and cultural arenas. He insisted
on giving psyche its rightful place in psychology and culture, fundamentally through
imagination, metaphor, art, and myth. That act he called soul-making, a term
borrowed from John Keats.
Scope and Content Note
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.
Hillman’s prolific writing and lecturing are evident in the files pertaining to his
books, collaborative volumes, and lectures he gave around the world, from the early
1960s to 2000. These files include drafts, research notes, manuscripts and
correspondence. Volumes include
Re-Visioning Psychology
(1974),
Freud’s Own Cookbook (1985) written with
Charles Boer,
We’ve Had a Hundred Years of Psychotherapy and
the World’s Getting Worse
(1992) with co-author Michael Ventura. Also
included are
Pan and the Nightmare (1972),
Oedipus Revisited (1989),
Inter-Views (1983),
A Psychological Commentary to
Kundalini
(1975), and
The Feeling Function
(1971). His contributions to the Eranos lectures and
Spring
Journal
also form a significant part of the collection.
Subjects and Indexing Terms
Archetype (Psychology)
Jungian psychology
Mythology
Art
Imagination
Culture--Studying and teaching