Contact Us
facebook
twitter
youtube
  • Campus Updates
  • Home
  • Research
    • Collections
    • Databases
      • Archives and Manuscripts
      • Joseph Campbell Library
      • Marija Gimbutas Library
    • Conducting Research at Opus
  • Events
  • Exhibits
  • Grants
  • Donate
  • About Us
    • About Us / Mission
    • Contact Us
    • Visiting OPUS
    • Board of Directors
    • eNewsletter
    • Join the Mailing List
    • Volunteer

The James Hillman Collection

hillmanJames Hillman (1926-2011) was an American psychologist, a leading scholar in Jungian and Post-Jungian thought, and is considered by many to be one of the most radical and original critics of contemporary culture. The field that he founded, Archetypal Psychology, emphasizes the importance of imagination both in the experience of psyche and in life itself.

Born in Atlantic City in 1926, he 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 Zurich and completed his training as a Jungian Analyst in 1959, becoming the Institute’s Director of Studies the same year—a position he held for ten years.

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. The body of his work is comprised of scholarly studies in several fields including psychology, philosophy, mythology, art, and cultural studies. His groundbreaking book, Re-visioning Psychology, was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize in 1975 and his book, The Soul’s Code: In Search of Character and Calling, was on the New York Times best seller list for nearly a year. His works also include The Myth of Analysis, Healing Fiction, The Dream and the Underworld, The Force of Character, Suicide and the Soul, A Terrible Love of War, among many others. The influences shaping the core of Hillman’s work are not limited to Depth Psychology. See the James Hillman bibliography for a list of his works.

James Hillman’s ideas have firm grounding in the classical Greek tradition and are also deeply influenced by Renaissance thought and Romanticism, encompassing the contributions of psychologists, philosophers, poets, and alchemists. Hillman described his own line of thought as part of the lineage of Heraclitus, Plato, Plotinus, Vico, Ficino, Schelling, Coleridge, Dilthey, Freud, and Jung. Other influential authors in Hillman´s work are Keats, Bachelard, Corbin, Nietzsche, Paracelsus, and Shelley.

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 Keats.

Opus Archives


Located on the campuses of Pacifica Graduate Institute in Santa Barbara, California, OPUS is a dynamic center for the advancement of the fields of depth psychology, mythology and the humanities.
 

database iconSearch the Archives & Manuscripts Database

Archives and Manuscripts
Joseph Campbell
Christine Downing
Marija Gimbutas
Adolf Guggenbühl-Craig
James Hillman
Tony Joseph
Jill Mellick
Katherine Sanford
Jane Hollister Wheelwright
Joseph Wheelwright

Marion Woodman

Rare Book Collections
William Henry Barnes
John Sanford


Location

OPUS Archives and Research Center
801 Ladera Lane
Santa Barbara, CA 93108

Located on the campuses of
Pacifica Graduate Institute

Mailing Address

OPUS Archives and Research Center
PO Box 1078
Carpinteria, CA 93014

Contact Us

Join the Mailing List

Campbell and Gimbutas Libraries

Hours

See Campus Updates.
Administrative offices and
archives are open
by appointment
Monday - Thursday
10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.

Research in the Archives
is by Appointment Only

facebook
twitter
instagram
youtube

© OPUS Archives and Research Center