Quotes by James Hillman - Page 4

Psychotherapy makes every problem a subjective, inner problem. And that's not where the problems come from. They come from the environment, the cities, the economy, the racism. They come from architecture, school systems, capitalism, exploitation. They come from many places that psychotherapy does not address. Psychotherapy theory turns it all on you: you are the one who is wrong.
James Hillman / Psychologist
Cities
Racism
School
Copy Quote
Mediocrity is no answer to violence. In fact, it probably invites violence. At least the mediocre and the violent appear together as in the old Western movies - the ruffian outlaw band shooting up main street and the little white church with the little white schoolteacher wringing her hands. To cool violence you need rhythm, humor, tempering; you need dance and rhetoric. Not therapeutic understanding.
James Hillman / Psychologist
Hands
Understanding
White
Copy Quote
We would like otherworldly visitations to come as distinct voices with clear instructions, but they may only give small signs in dreams, or as sudden hunches and insights that cannot be denied. They feel more as if they emerge from inside and steer you from within like an inner guardian angel. . . . And, most amazing, it has never forgotten you, although you may have spent most of your life ignoring it.
James Hillman / Psychologist
Dream
Inspirational
Angel
Copy Quote
In the cosmology behind psychology, there is no reason for anyone to be here or to do anything... I'am an accident - a result - and therefore a victim... if I'm only a result of past causes, then I'm a victim of those past causes.... or, if you look at it from the sociological perspective, I'm the result of upbringing, class, race, gender, social prejudices, and economics. So I'm a victim again. A result .
James Hillman / Psychologist
Class
Past
Race
Copy Quote
Why do we focus so intensely on our problems? What draws us to them? Why are they so attractive? They have the magnet power of love: somehow we desire our problems; we are in love with them much as we want to get rid of them . . . Problems sustain us -- maybe that's why they don't go away. What would a life be without them? Completely tranquilized and loveless . . . There is a secret love hiding in each problem
James Hillman / Psychologist
Focus
Going Away
Secret Love
Copy Quote
...you find your genius by looking in the mirror of your life. Your visible image shows your inner truth, so when you're estimating others, what you see is what you get. It therefore becomes critically important to see generously, or you will get only what you see; to see sharply, so that you discern the mix of traits rather than a generalized lump; and to see deeply into dark shadows, or else you will be deceived.
James Hillman / Psychologist
Dark
Mirrors
Shadow
Copy Quote
My war - and I have yet to win a decisive battle - is with the modes of thought that and conditioned feelings that prevail in psychology and therefore also in the way we think and feel about our being. Of these conditions none are more tyrannical than the convictions that clamp the mind and heart into positivistic science (geneticism and computerism), economics (bottom-line capitalism), and single-minded faith (fundamentalism).
James Hillman / Psychologist
War
Heart
Thinking
Copy Quote
Ecology movements, futurism, feminism, urbanism, protest and disarmament, personal individuation cannot alone save the world from the catastrophe inherent in our very idea of the world. They require a cosmological vision that saves the phenomenon 'world' itself, a move in soul that goes beyond measures of expediency to the archetypal source of our world's continuing peril: the fateful neglect, the repression, of the anima mundi.
James Hillman / Psychologist
Ideas
Moving
Our World
Copy Quote
'Mediocre' tends to mean 'undistinguished', while snobs enjoy their distinguishing hallmarks of style - how they wear clothes, use words, where they go and gather and gossip. ...Whatever the circumstances the genius has put you into, the fact of individuality defends the soul against all class-action claims. No soul is mediocre, whatever your personal taste for conventionality, whatever your personal record of middling achievements.
James Hillman / Psychologist
Class
Clothes
Mean
Copy Quote
Not just any talk is conversation; not any talk raises consciousness. Good conversation has an edge: it opens your eyes to something, quickens your ears. And good conversation reverberates: it keeps on talking in your mind later in the day; the next day, you find yourself still conversing with what was said. That reverberation afterward is the very raising of consciousness; your mind's been moved. You are at another level with your reflections.
James Hillman / Psychologist
Eye
Reflection
Talking
Copy Quote
Suppose that throughout your childhood you were good with numbers. Other kids used to copy your homework. You figured store discounts faster than your parents. People came to you for help with such things. So you took accounting and eventually became a tax auditor for the IRS. What an embarrassing job, right? You feel you should be writing poetry or doing aviation mechanics or whatever. But then you realize that tax collecting can be a calling too.
James Hillman / Psychologist
Jobs
Kids
Writing
Copy Quote
A mother should have some fantasy about her child's future. It will increase her interest in the child, for one thing. To turn the fantasy into a program to make the child fly an airplane across the country, for example, isn't the point. That's the fulfillment of the parent's own dreams. That's different. Having a fantasy - which the child will either seek to fulfill or rebel against furiously - at least gives a child some expectation to meet or reject.
James Hillman / Psychologist
Dream
Country
Mother
Copy Quote
I'm not critical of the people who do psychotherapy. The therapists in the trenches have to face an awful lot of the social, political, and economic failures of capitalism. They have to take care of all the rejects and failures. They are sincere and work hard with very little credit, and the HMOs and the pharmaceutical companies and insurance companies are trying to wipe them out. So certainly I am not attacking them. I am attacking the theories of psychotherapy.
James Hillman / Psychologist
Hard Work
People
Political
Copy Quote
The character truest to itself becomes eccentric rather than immovably centered, as Emerson defined the noble character of the hero. At the edge, the certainty of borders gives way. We are more subject to invasions, less able to mobilize defenses, less sure of who we really are, even as we may be perceived by others as a person of character. The dislocation of self from center to indefinite edge merges us more with the world, so that we can feel blest by everything.
James Hillman / Psychologist
Blessing
Character
Hero
Copy Quote
I like to imagine a person's psyche to be like a boardinghouse full of characters. The ones who show up regularly and who habitually follow the house rules may not have met other long-term residents who stay behind closed doors, or who only appear at night. An adequate theory of character must make room for character actors, for the stuntmen and animal handlers, for all the figures who play bit parts and produce unexpected acts. They often make the show fateful, or tragic, or farcically absurd.
James Hillman / Psychologist
Animal
Character
Night
Copy Quote
I just read about John Le Carre, the great spy novelist. He had an absolutely miserable childhood. His mother deserted him when he was young. His father was a playboy and a drunk. He was shifted around to many different homes. He knew he was a writer when he was about nine, but he was dyslexic. So here was a person with an absolutely messed-up childhood and a symptom that prevented him from doing what he wanted to do most. Yet that very symptom was part of the calling. It forced him to go deeper.
James Hillman / Psychologist
Home
Father
Mother
Copy Quote
Your life is not predestined, as in Calvinist thought, where everything is written down in the book of life long before your birth and is inescapable. There are choices, accidents, hints and wrong paths, and the ego you, or whatever you call yourself, is a factor in all this. But there is still this other factor that keeps calling. At some moment, people turn, in despair or when they are unable to go any longer on a certain route, and this inner voice says, "Where have you been? I've been waiting for you to turn to me for a long time."
James Hillman / Psychologist
Book
Long
Voice
Copy Quote
Rather let us imagine the anima mundi as that particular soul-spark, that seminal image, which offers itself through each thing in its visible form. Then anima mundi indicates the animated possibilities presented by each new event as it is, its sensuous presentation as a face bespeaking its interior image - in short, its availability to imagination, its presence as psychic reality. Not only animals and plants ensouled as in the Romantic vision, but soul is given with each thing, God-given things of nature and man-made things of the street.
James Hillman / Psychologist
Men
Animal
Reality
Copy Quote
It helps to regard soul as an active intelligence, forming and plotting each person's fate. Translators use "plot" to render the ancient Greek word mythos in English. The plots that entangle our souls and draw forth our characters are the great myths. That is why we need a sense of myth and knowledge of different myths to gain insight into our epic struggles, our misalliances, and our tragedies. Myths show the imaginative structures inside our messes, and our human characters can locate themselves against the background of the characters of myth.
James Hillman / Psychologist
Character
Fate
Struggle
Copy Quote

Related Psychologist Authors

Jordan Peterson
Psychologist
Wolfgang Kohler
Psychologist
Friday, Jan 21, 1887
Sunday, Jun 11, 1967
William Schutz
Psychologist
Saturday, Dec 19, 1925
Saturday, Nov 09, 2002
William R. Miller
Psychologist
Friday, Jun 27, 1947
William Moulton Marston
Psychologist
Tuesday, May 09, 1893
Friday, May 02, 1947
William J. Mcgill
Psychologist
Monday, Feb 27, 1922
Sunday, Oct 19, 1997
William Herbert Sheldon
Psychologist
Saturday, Nov 19, 1898
Saturday, Sep 17, 1977
Wilhelm Wundt
Psychologist
Thursday, Aug 16, 1832
Tuesday, Aug 31, 1920
Wilhelm Stekel
Psychologist
Wednesday, Mar 18, 1868
Tuesday, Jun 25, 1940
Wilhelm Dilthey
Psychologist
Tuesday, Nov 19, 1833
Sunday, Oct 01, 1911
Wendell Johnson
Psychologist
Monday, Apr 16, 1906
Sunday, Aug 29, 1965
Wayne Oates
Psychologist
Sunday, Jun 24, 1917
Thursday, Oct 21, 1999
Walter Mischel
Psychologist
Saturday, Feb 22, 1930
Walter Dill Scott
Psychologist
Saturday, May 01, 1869
Saturday, Sep 24, 1955
Wade Horn
Psychologist
Friday, Dec 03, 1954

View All Psychologist Quotes

Top Authors

Mother Teresa
Saint
Friday, Aug 26, 1910
Friday, Sep 05, 1997
Socrates
Philosopher
Thursday, Jan 01, 1970
Thursday, Jan 01, 1970
Mae West
Actress
Thursday, Aug 17, 1893
Saturday, Nov 22, 1980
Thomas Aquinas
Priest
Tuesday, Jan 28, 1225
Wednesday, Mar 07, 1274
Pope John Paul Ii
Priest
Tuesday, May 18, 1920
Saturday, Apr 02, 2005
Dr. Seuss
Writer
Wednesday, Mar 02, 1904
Tuesday, Sep 24, 1991
Niccolo Machiavelli
Historian
Monday, May 03, 1469
Tuesday, Jun 21, 1527
Steve Jobs
Entrepreneur
Thursday, Feb 24, 1955
Wednesday, Oct 05, 2011
Lucy Larcom
Poet
Friday, Mar 05, 1824
Monday, Apr 17, 1893
Heraclitus
Philosopher
Thursday, Jan 01, 1970
Thursday, Jan 01, 1970
Epictetus
Philosopher
Theodore Roosevelt
26Th U.s. President
Wednesday, Oct 27, 1858
Monday, Jan 06, 1919
Ernest Hemingway
Author
Friday, Jul 21, 1899
Sunday, Jul 02, 1961
Kim Kardashian
Television Personality
Tuesday, Oct 21, 1980
Zig Ziglar
Author
Saturday, Nov 06, 1926
Wednesday, Nov 28, 2012

View All Authors

James Hillman Quotes - Page 4

App & Tools

Related Psychologist Authors

Popular Topic Tags

Top Authors

Share This Page

Stay Connected

App & Tools

Related Psychologist Authors

Popular Topic Tags

Top Authors

Share This Page