My practice tells me I can no longer distinguish clearly between neurosis of self and neurosis of world, psychopathology of self and psychopathology of world. Moreover, it tells me that to place neurosis and psychopathology solely in personal reality is a delusional repression of what is actually, realistically, being experienced.
The whole world is sick….and you can’t put this right by having a good therapeutic dialogue or finding deeper meanings. It’s not about meaning anymore; it’s about survival.
Psychological awareness rises from errors, coincidences, indefiniteness, from the chaos deeper than intelligent control.
In any system, whether a corporation, a family or the inner arrangements of the human psyche, a vigorous “no” to the good of the whole may serve the good of the whole and increase its power even more than a compliant “yes.”
“Well, what can I do about the world? This thing’s bigger than me.” That’s the child archetype talking. “All I can do is go into myself, work on my growth, my development, find good parenting, support groups.” This is a disaster for our political world, for our democracy. Democracy depends on intensely active citizens, not children.
Psychoanalysis needs more dissidents, more even than Laing and the antipsychiatric movement; it needs its own “terrorists of soul” in the sense of a radical seeing through of its fixed investments in profession – its banks and insurance, its law courts, its palaces of bureaucracy – to return soul to the world.
“Today we need heroes of descent, not masters of denial, mentors of maturity who can carry sadness, who give love to aging, who show soul without irony or embarrassment. — James Hillman
hat tip to Elements of Self-Destruction
More James Hillman on Beyond Meds
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On The Legacy Of Aging
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“Therapy supports the decline of the actual world”
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The right reaction to a symptom might be a welcoming rather than laments and demands for remedies
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Your personal daimon
Books by Hillman:
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