Archetypal Psychology: A Brief Account

by James Hillman

Book Overview

Traces the intellectual ancestry of archetypal psychology, assembles its literature, and clarifies the root metaphors governing its practice. Includes a bibliography of relevant publications, as well as a complete checklist of all of James Hillman's writings to 1992.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0882143212
• ISBN13: 9780882143217
• Release Date: January 1983
• Publisher: Spring Publications
• Length: 88 Pages
• Weight: 0.35 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Very basic introduction

This is a very, very basic introduction to the kind of psychology associated with James Hillman. The information is presented in short chapters (usually around 3-5 pages) and reads like a long Encylopedia entry (which is the form in which it was originally published). If you're a scholar looking for easily quotable summaries or a bibliography (more than half this book is bibliographic information), this volume would be useful. If you're looking to learn something or are after the pleasure Hillman's lyrical prose usually offers, you'll likely be disappointed here.

Champion of Soul and Descent.

Having read a variety of Hillman's books and articles and also some by Thomas Moore and David Miller, this book is a good summation of Archetypal Psychology's major thrusts. Any longer would perhaps be too technical. A large reference list of articles and books is particularly helpful. It is less theoretically oriented and more practically oriented than Jungian psychology, and, from Hillmans lucid writing, easier to understand."As Freud's paradigm of psychopathology was hysteria (and paranoia) and Jung's was schizophrenia, archetypal psychology has so far spoken mainly about depression" p 41. Anyone who has experienced their own underworld will relate to archetypal psychology. It validates and gives voice to those personal and cultural experiences of descent that are marginalised and suppressed in a western culture that priveleges optimism, objective science, consumerism and protestantism.