James Hillman wrote a book titled We’ve Had 100 Years of Psychotherapy and the World’s Getting Worse. I think that’s as good a place as any to start describing him. He studied at the Jung Institute in Zurich and was director of studies there for 10 years. He thought the work of therapy was to focus on soul, and images as the voice of the soul. The archetypes of Jung and the psychic states such as depression were symptoms of something going on at a deeper level: Soul. Rather than trying to “heal” such situations (in terms of making them go away), he argued that we should explore what such symptoms point to as needing to be addressed in the soul.

            One of my favorite diatribes by Hillman involves a hypothetical patient coming in and sitting there depressed and angry. He notes that a traditional therapy session would then go into “Well, let’s explore that. Let’s look at your childhood. Let’s try to get you so you don’t feel depressed and angry. What do you think about your personality might make you inclined to be depressed and angry?” Hillman counters with “Why do we blame the patient? Why shouldn’t we expect our patients to be depressed and angry? The food in the supermarkets is artificial. Maybe somebody cut him off in traffic on the way to his appointment. Maybe we can use the depression and the anger as a way to get the patient engaged with the world and community again.

            His insistence on the rock bottom truth of psychic elements as symptoms trying to indicate something needing healing in the personal and world soul led to a break with many traditional therapists.