Notes of October 28^th, 2011

Umberto Galimberti wrote an article about James Hillman, a world famous American professor and psychologist. The article was written in the day after his death on October 27^th 2011.

Mr Hillman became well-known because he adopted a new approach to psychoanalysis in respect of the traditional patient – analyst relationship. In his opinion was very useful for the patient going back to archetypes because our personalities are shaped by all that we felt and lived in our lives. Moreover he was convinced that today’s psychological suffering is rooted in society.

In the article there are two key words, which underline what James Hillman’s work was focus on:

Archetype = is the deepest model of the way our psyche works like the roots of the soul which govern the perspective from which we can see the world.

Soul = is something which cannot be defined in concrete, which imply a silent dialogue of the individual.

The ideas of archetype and soul permeate the modernist culture.

The Hours, written by Michael Cunningham, is a postmodernist text based on a intertextual approach to a very world famous novel, a modernist novel by Virginia Woolf.

In the 60’s the cultural movement of Post-modernism was the main school of though widespread in Europe. It put under discussion, in a philosophical way, the concept of authority.

The new way of thinking expresses that what makes someone’s authority is not his higher position but the recognition of his or her importance from a social group.