Lament of the Dead: Psychology After Jung's Red Book

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Jung lightly implied this ethics but was, as Hillman points out, probably not entirely conscious of it. Hillman, the founder of Archetypal Psychology, was one of the most prominent psychologists in America and is widely acknowledged as the most original figure to emerge from Jung's school. In 1970, Hillman became editor of Spring Publications, a publishing company devoted to advancing Archetypal Psychology as well as publishing books on mythology, philosophy and art.

The dialogues’ deep-sounding yet unproductive theme is that these figures represent “the dead [who] are animating us”—figuratively, the collective human memory that shapes our psyches. It was amazing when Carl Jung's Red Book/Liber Novus was released in 2009, including the original illlumination as well as translations and footnotes.In the case of Darwin, Greene ignores the formative intellectual influences that shaped his thought, including the discovery of geological evolution with which he was familiar before his famous voyage. Hillman introduces the concepts of the book with his explanation of Jung’s reaction to the theologian and missionary Albert Schweitzer. Some of my favorite James Hillman books are the ones that transcribe his conversations, capturing his thoughts on the fly. Hillman’s interest in The Red Book was enough to make him swallow his pride, and many previous statements, enough to join the Jungians again.

Some scholars believe Jung was partially psychotic while writing The Red Book, others claim he was in a state of partial dissociation or simply use Jung’s term “active imagination”. They are David Tacey, John Beebe, Sonu Shamdasani, Carl Jung, Fritz Perls, Karen Horney, and Hal Stone. James Hillman: I was reading about this practice that the ancient Egyptians had of opening the mouth of the dead.I can still hear her speaking from the grave, and the way she comes to me is as a background voice, someone looking over my shoulder and whispering between-the-lines secrets as I read the words of Hillman and Shamdasani.