Customer Reviews

City And Soul: Uniform (James Hillman Uniform Edition) (Volume 2)

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City and Soul is volume 3 of James Hillman's Collected Works. It spans 3 decades of his writing and lectures, spanning the years 1978-2005.At 404 pages it is a thick and formidable compendium of Hillman's thinking on city life, culture, imagination, aesthetics, politics, violence, anima mundi--in fact all of the major themes that have occupied his thought for many decades. As I read it I took over 80 pages of notes, so provocative and inciting are his thoughts. His insights on the imagination and aesthetics is worth the price of the volume. But more importantly, Hillman lifts soul out of the interiority of the individual and places it in the textural life of the cityscape. Cities, like people, he believes, suffer depression joy, celebration, breakdown, growth spurts, disease, hunger and poverty.
For an overview of what archetypal psychology finds relevant to study, and, how to study, this volume is invaluable.

Mr. Hillman's book is important as suggested in its title. He approaches the city, which we tend to think of in physical terms, from a psychological point of view. He convincingly makes the link between the life of the city and its soul and between an individual's psyche and her environment's psyche. He works from the origin of words and therein provides depth and breadth to his observation. Hillman has to be a renegade among psychiatrists which enables him to view the city as his domain, too; he crowds up to the bar with the traditional urbanists---sociologists, designers, political scientists, and the lot. He sees the city at an angle, thus making a bright spectrum of observations, unseen by most others. Hillman also understands deep ecology and questions the dichotomy made between city/country. My problem with the book is its repetition--it's a collection of speeches made over time in various locations. It could have been half the size and more targeted with some good editing. After a while, it insults the reader as it pounds away at several important themes again and again.