Article on James Hillman

The article was written by Umberto Galimberti the day after the death of James Hillman. He was an American psychologist. He studied at the C.G. Jung Institute in Zurich, he founded a movement toward archetypal psychology and he retired into private practice, writing and traveling to lecture, until his death at his home in Connecticut on October 27^th , 2011.

He adopted a different approach from the psyche analysis, suggesting an alternative approach to the traditional patient-analyst relationship. In J.Hillman's opinion what is very useful for the patient is to go back to the archetypes.

An archetype is the deepest model of the way your psyche works like the roots of the soul which governs the perspective from which we can see the world.

Another important concept is the soul' ‘s one ; the soul is something which cannot be defined in concrete terms. It implies an individual silent dialogue.

Whereas the traditional psychology focused on the Self, its dynamics and its characters  (ego, anima, animus, shadow), Hillman's Archetypal psychology relativizes the ego and focuses on psyche, or soul, and on the archetypes, the deepest patterns of psychic functioning.

Ideas of archetypes and soul also permeate the modernist culture.

The Hours by M.Cunningham is a post- modernist text based on an intertextual approach to a very famous modernist novel by Virgina Woolf.

In the 60's the postmodernism was the most widespread cultural movement. It changed the idea of authority ; before 60's people searched certainties on someone who had strong ideas and opinions. During the sixty years there was a debate regarding the question " Who or what gives somebody the authority? "; the answer founded was that what makes someone authority was not the person's higher position, but the recognition of his or her importance from a social group.