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James Hillman [1926-0] American
Rank: 102
Psychologist


James Hillman was an American psychologist. He studied at, and then guided studies for, the C.G. Jung Institute in Zurich. He founded a movement toward archetypal psychology and retired into private practice, writing and traveling to lecture, until his death at his home in Connecticut.

Car, Beauty, Change, Courage, Education, Home, Learning, Society, Wisdom

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Psychotherapy theory turns it all on you: you are the one who is wrong. If a kid is having trouble or is discouraged, the problem is not just inside the kid; it's also in the system, the society. Society
101
We approach people the same way we approach our cars. We take the poor kid to a doctor and ask, What's wrong with him, how much will it cost, and when can I pick him up? Car
102
The capacity for people to kid themselves is huge. Living on illusions or delusions, and the re-establishing of these illusions or delusions requires a big effort to keep them from being seen through. But a very old idea is at work behind our current state of affairs: enantiodromia, or the Greek notion of things turning into their opposite.
103
We can't change anything until we get some fresh ideas, until we begin to see things differently. Change
104
I'm the result of upbringing, class, race, gender, social prejudices, and economics. So I'm a victim again. A result.
105
The culture is going into a psychological depression. We are concerned about our place in the world, about being competitive: Will my children have as much as I have? Will I ever own my own home? How can I pay for a new car? Are immigrants taking away my white world? Car, Home
106
I think we're miserable partly because we have only one god, and that's economics.
107
It is impossible to see the angel unless you first have a notion of it.
108
Instead of seeing depression as a dysfunction, it is a functioning phenomenon. It stops you cold, sets you down, makes you damn miserable.
109
It's very hard to know what wisdom is. Wisdom
110
You don't know what you're going to get into when you follow your bliss.
111
In the history of the treatment of depression, there was the dunking stool, purging of the bowels of black bile, hoses, attempts to shock the patient. All of these represent hatred or aggression towards what depression represents in the patient.
112
Depression opens the door to beauty of some kind. Beauty
113
When they talk about family values, it's in a repressive way, as if our American tradition were only the Puritan tradition or the 19th century oppressive tradition. The Christian tradition.
114
We need to work on the world so it will not be so oppressive.
115
Everything that everyone is afraid of has already happened: The fragility of capitalism, which we don't want to admit; the loss of the empire of the United States; and American exceptionalism. In fact, American exceptionalism is that we are exceptionally backward in about fifteen different categories, from education to infrastructure. Education
116
Remember that in the early days of the feminist movement, they refused to have a leader; different women would just stand up and speak. The early feminists were very careful to not put what was spontaneously arising back in the old bottle.
117
Sooner or later something seems to call us onto a particular path... this is what I must do, this is what I've got to have. This is who I am.
118
The moment the angel enters a life it enters an environment. We are ecological from day one.
119
We need to have an educational system that's able to embrace all sorts of minds, and where a student doesn't have to fit into a certain mold of learning. Learning
120
You don't attack the grunts of Vietnam; you blame the theory behind the war. Nobody who fought in that war was at fault. It was the war itself that was at fault. It's the same thing with psychotherapy.
121
I don't think anything changes until ideas change. The usual American viewpoint is to believe that something is wrong with the person.
122
It's important to ask yourself, How am I useful to others? What do people want from me? That may very well reveal what you are here for.
123
Just stop for a minute and you'll realize you're happy just being. I think it's the pursuit that screws up happiness. If we drop the pursuit, it's right here.
124
Loss means losing what was we want to change but we don't want to lose. Without time for loss, we don't have time for soul.
125
We forget that the soul has its own ancestors.
126
As Plotinus tells us, we elected the body, the parents, the place, and the circumstances that suited the soul and that, as the myth says, belongs to its necessity.
201
It's very important for men to look downward, to the next generation.
202
All we can do when we think of kids today is think of more hours of school, earlier age at the computer, and curfews. Who would want to grow up in that world?
203
If you are still being hurt by an event that happened to you at twelve, it is the thought that is hurting you now.
204
The elder who is eliminating what time has done to the face, what life has done to the face, is making a statement for others to see: This is the way to be a good old person - it is to defeat this body that is doing things to you. Because you haven't changed. Your body's changing.
205
The older people that one admires seem to be fearless. They go right out into the world. It's astounding. Maybe they can't see or they can't hear, but they walk out into the street and take life as it comes. They're models of courage, in a strange way. Courage
206
I'm in favor of destruction, aggression, hating things. Not bearing things anymore. We think the breakdown comes because our life is in bad shape. But maybe the ideas cause the disorder. Something tries to break through and causes the disorder.
207
I don't have answers. I have questions.
208
Too many people have been analyzing their pasts, their childhoods, their memories, their parents, and realizing that it doesn't do anything-or that it doesn't do enough.
209
I see happiness as a by-product. I don't think you can pursue happiness. I think that phrase is one of the very few mistakes the Founding Fathers made.
210
I know my own deficiencies, one of which is that I had lived away from America for such a long time. It's called expatriate.
211
The word power has such a generally negative implication in our society. What are people talking about? Are they talking about muscles, or control?
212
The circumstances, including my body and my parents, whom I may curse, are my soul's own choice and I do not understand this because I have forgotten.
213
I can't read all the books I want to read, I can't watch all the phenomena that interest me in the world. The work calls me, and sometimes I wonder whether this is an obsession and I should drop it, or it's a necessity I'm obliged to fulfill.
214
I'm cautious about a lot of words.
215
We have to give value to authority. We have to give value to office, being in office, holding office.
216
Whether we like it or not, men have more of the offices, more of the higher jobs, more of the seats in Congress. Men need to re-examine what their power is. We need to understand how to use it.
217
We're an air bag society that wants guarantees on everything that we buy. We want to be able to take everything back and get another one. We want a 401-k plan and Social Security.
218
We carve out risk-free lives where nothing happens.
219
Fear is a huge thing for older people.
220
Futurism is another American myth: whether Kennedy, Johnson, Reagan or Obama, American presidents all come into office with a new program, and the conviction that the country is going to be better than ever.
221
My suggestion is that there's no way out of the human condition. Sex, death, marriage, children, parents, illness. There's no way out. They're a misery, all of them.
222

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