The Soul's Code: In Search of Character and Calling (Paperback)

by James Hillman (Author)
Key Phrases: parental fallacy, acorn theory, innate image, Judy Garland, Josephine Baker, United States (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review
James Hillman, a former director of the Jung Institute who has written more than 20 books on behavior and psychology, delves into human development in The Soul's Code. Hillman encourages you to "grow down" into the earth, as an acorn does when it becomes a mighty oak tree. He argues that character and calling are the result of "the particularity you feel to be you" and knocks those who blame childhood difficulties for all their problems as adults. According to Hillman, "The current American identity as a victim is the flip side of the coin whose head brightly displays the opposite identity: the heroic self-made man, carving out destiny alone and with unflagging will." Hillman's theories seem disarmingly simple, but he backs them with a careful, well-practiced intellect. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly
Decades ago, pioneering Jungian analyst and author Hillman (Kinds of Power) challenged the assumptions of Western psychology by applying the ancient concept of "soul" to the modern psyche. Rendered in simpler terms by his protege, bestselling author Thomas Moore, Hillman's work on soul has fed the public imagination with the nourishing idea that we are vastly deeper and more permeable to the influences around us than we may think. Here, Hillman discusses character and calling, introducing an "acorn theory" that claims that "each life is formed by its unique image, an image that is the essence of that life and calls it to a destiny." Borrowing the language of Plato's Myth of Ur, Hillman suggests that this imaginary sense of our lives or callings drives each of us like a personal daimon or force. Drawing on extraordinary lives from Judy Garland to Coco Chanel to Hitler, he describes the movements of the daimon, showing how it can use everything in our environment, from lucky accidents to bad movies, to allow the acorn to "grow down" and express itself in the real material of our lives. Without succumbing to oversimplification or wishful thinking, Hillman challenges the reductive "parental fallacy"?the contention that our early experience with our parents determines our selves and our futures. The daimon, he says, pulls us up out of mere conditioning to have a fate. In this brilliant, absorbing work, Hillman dares us to believe that we are each meant to be here; that we are needed by the world around us. Simultaneous Random AudioBook; author tour.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 352 pages
• Publisher: Grand Central Publishing (October 1, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0446673714
• ISBN-13: 978-0446673716
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.5 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars See all reviews (49 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #71,818 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

133 of 138 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars a refreshing antidote to reductionist, mainstream psychology, October 21, 1999

By	Ruth Henriquez Lyon (Duluth, Minnesota USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I am on my second reading of this book, having read it once a couple of years ago and let the ideas percolate in the back of my mind. It is one of the most liberating books I have ever read. As an adult survivor of child abuse, I was in therapy for over 16 years and never felt that mainstream psychologists have any idea of just how powerful our soul's nature is. A system of healing which leaves out our spiritual energies-- and our ability to transform our realities into the stuff of myth--is an impotent system, at least if you are someone whose roots run very deep. I made little progress in my own healing until I began working on the spiritual and soul aspects of my life. Hillman writes that we are not as shaped by the horrors of our early upbringing as we are told by psychotherapists. What an inspiration for transcending the past! Unlike authors such as Carolyn Myss, he offers this teaching in a way that does not blame people for their anger about the past. He simply offers a way beyond the anger and other self-imposed limits, cheerfully and graciously. The detractors of this book state that it is not scientific enough. Of course it is not scientific--it's about bringing the energies of the invisible into your life. You don't have to do reductionist studies of the principles involved to have them change your way of thinking about yourself... I recommend this book to anyone who is tired of the dry, sterile approach to healing offered by professional counselors who have not themselves explored the "realms beyond" and therefore cannot teach us how to experience them for our benefit.

73 of 75 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Ideas as Art, July 26, 1998

By	Tom Fulton (Minneapolis, Minnesota USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Soul's Code: In Search of Character and Calling (Paperback)

Like other Hillman books I have read, The Souls Code seems best read as a myth rather than a statement of metaphysical reality. The myth either resonates or not. The Soul's Code thesis that human beings are born with a daimon - an encoded destiny - is best judged as an artistic work of imagination rather than an assertion of objective truth. I found Soul's Code well worth reading for its many provacative and creative ideas but less resonant than several other Hillman works such as Re-Visioning Psychology in which Hillman sets forth his vision of the human psyche as essentially plural, and the essay Peaks and Vales, which draws a fascinating distinction between spirit and soul.

I can't quite reconcile Hillman's notion of a destiny (which seems psychologically monotheistic) with his image of the polytheistic personality, which I understand to be one of the bedrock assumptions of archetypal physchology. If the human psyche contains many persons, it would seem that the pursuit of a destiny would require repression of the many selves and inflation.

I enjoyed Hillman's challenges to psychotherapy, which I believe has a huge power shadow. I agree that the fantasy that parenting is the source of all adult misery should be rejected. I believe, however, that Hillman may have misrepresented family system therapy as promoting this view. In my experience, the goal of family system therapy is to establish an adult to adult relationship that includes the capacity to know one's parents in their complexity. Parental wounds become only one element in a much larger and more paradoxical story. I also found it interesting that Hillman seems to disagree with his friend and colleague Robert Bly by questioning the notion that the "absent father" is a fundamental source of male woundedness. One last point: I thought the section entitled Loneliness and Exile (p. 53) was particularly profound and moving.

My favorite passage from the book:

...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." (p.259)

17 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Life-Changing Perspective, August 29, 2006

By	J. Duncan Berry (Yarmouth Port, MA USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

After reading Moore's "Care of the Soul," I decided to move on to his teacher, James Hillman. And I am glad I did.

This book gave me pause to conduct my own personal "archetypal autobiography," an exercise that has utterly transformed my life. Hillman's insights into the forces that move and motivate us have helped me as a man, as a father, and as a scholar.

I had my own copy bound in leather and I refer to it periodically -- when trends and events in my my life require archetypal realignment, when my soul needs grooming, and when I need the kind of perspective that shows me how I can gracefully my past into my present, and thence to the future.

It is a subtle and sophisticated set of arguments, not for the feint of mind.

Flip to his presentation of Plato's myth of Er (pp. 7-9 and 44-47) to capture a sense of Hillman's expansive wisdom.