Customer Reviews

Insearch: Psychology and Religion (Jungian Classics Series)

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....even though this is an early book of his. Although well and clearly written, as all his books are (just reading his sentences can be a joy), he left behind many of its major premises long ago, a fact he recapitulates in a Postscript added in 1994.

For instance, in contrast to what this book presents:

1. "Soul" was a word he liked to use in the 60's, whereas now he talks about "psyche."

2. Soul here is to be explored by an "insearch" (as opposed to "research"), a turning within. Soul in the world is not mentioned--or as Hillman writes about himself with such a severe tone, "The author doesn't even get to the window."

3. What Jung called "the shadow" is also in the world, not just in us as a moral problem.

4. Soul is not something lost that must be found (the Christianistic premise, God forbid). It is evident everywhere, within and without, and most particularly within our symptoms.

5. Psyche is a "third" between matter and spirit. (I have to bark here. Hillman's notion of "spirit" is everything the mystics say isn't spiritual: order, literality, authority, mentality, rationality... But I'd agree that psyche is a third between matter and mind. Because all this senex stuff is mind, not spirit.)

Etc.

For students of Hillman and archetypal psychology, the book might make an excellent contrast between his very early and more traditional Jungian thought and his more radical, later, re-visioning psychological polytheism. Otherwise, you're better off with his later work: gems like THE DREAM AND THE UNDERWORLD, RE-VISIONING PSYCHOLOGY, INTER VIEWS, THE THOUGHT OF THE HEART AND SOUL OF THE WORLD, and THE SOUL'S CODE.