James Hillman on Myth, Soul, and Archetypal Identity

Myth, Narrative, and the Construction of Identity

A myth is a kind of preferred lie. It is something we can create for ourselves, casting it with the players we want and imbuing it with emotion where there was none. A fact, by contrast, is simply a fact—there is no way around it. If a person becomes ill and subsequently loses the ability to see, for example, there is no escaping the fact that they are now blind. That fact cannot be changed. However, when a person tells the story of how they became very ill and what it was like to lose their eyesight, the story becomes different with each telling because strong feelings accompany it.

James Hillman argued that who we are as people—our psychic identity—comes from our own fictionalization of facts that complicate events into a story, creating a narrative that inexorably takes on some of the qualities of a myth. Myths are important for identity because their very nature carries a timeless element. Many different archetypes emerge from myths. If we look at the archetype of the mother, for example, we understand—through our own interpretations—that the mother will take care of us. She will tend to all of our needs, feed us when we are hungry, and protect us from danger. However, there are many different ways to feed and protect that are both concrete and symbolic.

Ricoeur argued that everyone has a vague sense of who they want to be, anticipating his or her own identity. The person then plays the role of the person they have created. Each time an individual explains who they are, a new interpretation of those same elements is produced. The facts about each of us take on new meaning when they become an essential part of a narrative, and our narrative keeps evolving throughout our entire lifetimes until we die.

Jung's Archetypes and the Inner Commune

Hillman (1977) discusses Jung's archetypal persons—"the little people"—in Re-visioning Psychology, noting that Jung used the words "shadow," "self," and "anima" or "animus" to refer to the structural components of the personality. Hillman suggested that we think of these as partial personalities whose relationships to one another function almost like characters in a story. A person can think of him- or herself as being made up of personal relationships playing out internally—or, as Hillman called it, "an inner commune."

The shadow is one of the most common archetypes, reflecting the deeper and more obscure parts of our psyche. These are elements of ourselves that are darker, unknown, and shadowy, and they can be potentially harmful. For Jung, the self is not merely an individual person; the self is also connected to God—it is the spirit that links us to others and to the rest of the universe. The anima (in males) or animus (in females) represents the soul and serves as the vehicle through which we communicate with the collective unconscious. According to Jung, the anima or animus represents the true self.

Hillman (1977) notes that we speak familiarly of these archetypes as the components of personality playing "through their archetypal scenes, which we call our life problems," and they even acquire their own personal pronouns. For example: "She (the mother complex) paralyzes me," or "He (the father complex) never stops driving me; he wants me perfect" (1977). We recognize Jung's archetypes in image as well as in emotion. They have a very significant impact on us, which Jung believed was because they possess profound and primitive origins. It is these archetypes that Jung held ultimately responsible for our personalities. As Hillman notes, Jung said, "It is not we who must personify them; they have a personal nature from the beginning" (1977).

"Sticking to the image" is Hillman's (Moore, 1990) motto regarding the importance of preserving the image. This means that images should not be translated into meanings "as though images were allegories or symbols" (Hillman; Moore, 1990). He believes that if there is some kind of latent dimension to an image, "it is its inexhaustibility, its bottomlessness" (1990).

Sticking to the Image and Active Imagination

Hillman (Moore, 1990) states that "the soul reveals itself in its ideas, which are not 'just ideas' or 'just up in the head,' and may not be 'pooh-poohed' away, since they are the very modes through which we are envisioning and enacting our lives." This means that we are always having ideas. They are part of us as we go about our daily routines, often without our being aware that they are present. These are imaginal images, and Hillman (1990) posits that they are as important as a person's dreams and desires. "Our images are our keepers, as we are theirs" (1990).

Active imagination is a means by which people can truly know themselves. Hillman (Moore, 1990) says that active imagination is similar to art in procedure but is very distinct from art's goal. Active imagination "foregoes an end result in physical product, but more because its intention is Know Thyself" (1990). This active imagination accompanies us throughout our lifetimes. When we think of knowing ourselves—truly understanding who we are—Hillman writes:

…from the imaginistic viewpoint, self-understanding is interminable because it is not in time to begin with. Know Thyself is revelatory, nonlinear, discontinuous; it is like a painting, a lyric poem; biography thoroughly gone into the imaginative act… Each image is its own beginning, its own end, healed by and in itself (Hillman; Moore, 1990).

In "The Thought of the Heart," Hillman (Moore, 1990) discusses the importance of beauty as a way through which "the gods touch our senses, reach the heart and attract us to life." Aesthetics bring everything around us to life, and if there were no beauty—or some means of perceiving it through sense perception—the world would not be alive. Hillman (1990) suggests that it is the thought of the heart that perceives and animates images, implying a soulful quality in all things in our environment, whether natural or not.