Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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33 of 35 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A masterpiece of Depth Psychology., January 26, 2001
Many readers may be familiar with James A. Hillman's best selling "The Soul's Code." As a best seller, that was within the genre of popular psychology. "The Dream and the Underworld," however deals with the area within psychology of "depth psychology." Our present culture is a milieu in which psychology and psychiatry deal with matters such as biopsychiatry, psychopharmacology, brief psychotherapy, quick fixes. A lot of this climate has to do with third party payments, either by an insurer or an Employee Assistance Plan. A qualified psychiatrist or clinical psychologist may often use Depth Psychology in conjunction with the prescription of medications where time and money are not an issue. Depth psychology seeks to treat the causes of a psychiatric disorder rather than just provide relief from the symptoms. Dream analysis is an art, or science, that has a long-respected history dating back to Biblical times. More recently, it has been the subject of extensive writing by 20th century psychiatrists such as Freud and Jung. I struggled with the writings of both Freud and Jung on dreams in university courses, having found that they did not read all that well. Rather than say that I follow a particular school of psychological theory, I like the more pragmatic approach of taking what is meaningful from those that I read. Hillman's thesis for "The Dream and the Underworld" is briefly outlined in Chapter 1. It is more like the opening statement that a lawyer might make in presenting a case rather than the abstract that a psychologist might write at the beginning of a journal article. Hillman does not rely on repression or compensation, but deals with the dream in relation with the soul and the soul with death. In the context used by Hillman, the "soul" takes on a meaning that equates to the human "psyche" but with a quasi-religious quality. You should not take Hillman's concept of the soul as necessarily being the same as the soul discussed at church or Sunday school. To study the soul, we must go deep. The study of the soul (going back to the Greek origins of the word "psychology") implies a journey into the depths of the soul. Classical Greek and Roman literature locates the dreams in the House of Hades. Hillman uses images to begin in this mythological underworld. In many ways, it is similar to his "Pan and the Nightmare." He emphasizes both observation and the insight that follows from drawing of inferences from the metaphor of the myth. This is not a "how to" book. There is an emphasis on the analysis of the dream as a modality of therapy, however, in other pieces of Hillman's writings, he posits the concept that "self therapy" is not effective. One of the essential things Hillman emphasizes is that we should be aware of our dreams. Although not actually so stated, there would be an advantage to keeping a journal where the subject logs his/her dreams. I feel that "The Dream and the Underworld" provides a road map to a greater level of self understanding.
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29 of 31 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Builds on, and refutes, established dream theories., September 8, 2000
Hillman wrote this book in the mid-seventies, and it is surprising to me how little effect it seems to have had on the various schools of dream interpretation. Perhaps this is because Hillman's "underworld" is an ambiguous, sometimes frightening place, a place where each psyche is rooted into the Beyond, and where daytime morality has no dominion. According to the author, the underworld and its dreams contribute to the making of Soul, and are not to be used as helps to fix up our daytime life. To do so is an act of exploitation. This clearly is at odds with our culture's fixation on mining one's dreams for images, ideas, and information that can help us be more productive and functional players in the status quo world we inhabit during waking hours.
Hillman carefully develops his ideas through looking at the work of Freud, Jung, and other twentieth century dream workers. He winnows out the wheat from the chaff, and uses the wheat to thrust dream interpretation forward, and farther away from the safe, cozy realm the ego would so much like to stay wrapped up in. One gets the feeling reading this book that safety does not a strong soul make.
Being an inveterate "miner" of dreams myself, I was at first rather resistant to Hillman's thesis. Eventually, though, I came around to his point of view (with reservations), mainly because I realized that dreams and soulwork are very much like art. Just as art should not always be made for any practical "daytime" use, so with our souls and dream images.
However, this opens a question. For thousands of years, shamans have traveled into the underworld to bring back energy for healing individuals and their communities. They act as conduits for energies traveling up from the Otherworld so that this world can be "seeded" and keep evolving. Is this, too, an act of exploitation? I don't think so. But I do think, after reading this book, that we should be aware of, and careful about, how we use the images and teachings that come to us, unbidden, as we sleep.
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20 of 22 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Mortality is fatal ! A down to earth approach to dreams., January 27, 2001
I have written in the cover of this book:"This is the book of Hillman's I have been waiting for. After his 'Facing the Gods", "The Myth of Analysis", "Puer Papers", "A Blue Fire" and getting little entrees from each, finally here is the main meal." I came to this book from the wastelands of clinical depression rather than dreams but recognised immediately the realm of soul here described by Hillman. He suggests that dreams are messengers or reminders of soul and thus of our mortality, of (our) death; a healthy antidote to the 'immortality' syndrome to which we are all prone until we live through a life threatening illness or crisis. I must admit to reading this book somewhat 'impressionistically' without necessarily trying to follow his arguments, but even then, the impression was compelling. Without a classical training I had to infer the meaning of a lot of the greek words he uses (eg. telos, phrenes, thymos, topos) from the context. I'm still not entirely clear as to their meaning even now. A glossary would have been useful for lay readers, though I don't think they were necessarily the target audience. I have yet to find a layman's glossary or dictionary of Jungian and Archetypal Psychological terms. Certainly my education has been broadened. Why haven't we heard more of this approach in the popular books on dreams ? It is original, compelling and as cogent as any other approach to interpreting dreams. Is it so 'down to earth' that we would rather cling to the 'fantasy' of approaches that massage our egos a little more.
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