A Dialogue With James Hillman
A Dialogue With James Hillman
A Dialogue With James Hillman
To cite this article: Shaun McNiff Professor of Expressive Therapy and Dean (1986) A Dialogue with James Hillman, Art
Therapy: Journal of the American Art Therapy Association, 3:3, 99-110, DOI: 10.1080/07421656.1986.10758680
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A Dialogue with James Hillman
Shaun McNiff is a Professor of Expressive Therapy and Dean, Institute for the Arts and Human
Development at Lesley College, Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Harper and Row, 1978. originate elsewhere. Going to the ings with the image.
Loose Ends: Primary Papers in Arche- past for an explanation is the reduc- 1 do not say, become the truck, or
typal Psychology. NY/Zurich: tion of the image to something al- the little dog. That is the "I," the
Spring Publications, 1975. ready known. We want to place it ego, swallowing the dream. You are
Re-Visioning Psychology. NY: Harper somewhere familiar, avoid its per- not the dog, the truck. They are inde-
plexity. Traditional psychotherapy is pendent psychic events. It is impor-
and Row, 1975. Nominated for a
a system of avoidance. Jung said, tant to feel what you feel vis a vis
Pulitzer Prize.
start with what is, there, now. Do the truck and the dog; not what they
The Dream and the Underworld. NY: feel.
Harper and Row, 1979. not interrupt it.
In our culture we are historical There is also the problem of
Healing Fiction. Barrytown, NY: Sta- ownership. People will soon be
tion Hill Press, 1983. materialists. We favor the past in a
literalistic way. We are stuck with owning the Gods, by feeling what
Archetypal Psychology: A Brief Account. they feel. Very pretentious! If a fox
Dallas: Spring Publications, 1983. the efficient and immediate cause.
We have lost the formal cause (Aris- comes to you in a dream, it is not
Inter Views. NY: Harper and Row, yours, anymore than a fox that
totle and Thomas Aquinas), the way
1983. comes to you in the forest. You are
the dream or thing is put together,
Thought of the Heart (1979). Dallas: that which forms it in a certain way. one figure in the dream. What
Spring Publications, 1984. The psyche takes the residues of comes to you is not yours. The ego
Freud's Own Cookbook (with Charles yesterday and forms it today. Aristo- is not the owner.
Boer). NY: Harper and Row, 1985. tle and St. Thomas also had the final S.M.: You are suggesting that the
Anima: An Anatomy of a Personified cause, that for the sake of which drawing, the art work, is distinct
Notion. Dallas: Spring Publica- something happens. The final cause, from the person. It has a life of its
tions, 1985. the intention or purpose in each own.
event is crucial to looking at life psy- f.H.: When Plotinus said, about
chologically. the Gods, "It is for them to come to
Shaun McNiff: Do you ever think S.M.: Is there an existential terror me, not for me to go to them," he
about where images come from? or simple reluctance to look at the was probably talking against magic
James Hillman: I try to never think situations before us for what they and theurgy: attempts to make the
about origins, neither about myself are, in themselves? I feel that within Gods do things you want them to
nor about the universe. These things an art therapy context, analytic inter- do. Like Prayer. "For them to come
lead into the past and away from pretation according to a particular to me" as a visitation. Now, take
phenomena. In practice it is an es- psychological system stops the proc- this in terms of images: images,
cape from what is. I live to specu- ess of dialogue, it establishes a dis- whether in dreams, in poems, in
late, but I am appalled by the money tance between people, and between dayfantasies, or in art. If they come
that is spent on determining where the person and the phenomena. A to you, then you respond as best
the universe came from. I am inter- participant in one of my art therapy you can; you record the dream, you
ested in the fantasy of origins, why it training groups said that this kind of enter the fantasy, question it, talk
back of your mind the idea that rH.: A rule of thumb might be: on the shelf. Get images.
what comes to me may be a visitor, everything is right in the dream ex- S.M.: For example?
a "God." That was the moral of the cept for the ego. I do not question
old tale of Bauds and Philemon: J.H.: A man dreams he is flying at
the other things in a dream as much incredible speed in and around stars
they let some broken down vagrants as I question the behavior and at-
into their little house, who turned seeing wonderful lights in a vehicle
titudes of the dream ego. It is usu- piloted by James Dean. He wakes up
out to be Gods. Mercury and Apollo, ally defensive, or hysterical, or anx-
I think. This notion of the image as a happy and feeling good, he says. In
ious, or just plain dumb. By "dream another dream, he meets a girl from
visitor, a visitation-rather than ego" I mean the "1" that is walk~ng
some thing creative, created by childhood who looked down on him
around in the dream and w ith for being puny, and in this dream,
"me"-also helps account for why whom the dreamer feels identified in
it's so damned hard to make a poem in her kitchen, she says "don't go
the morning. Often what feels right away." He wakes up happy and
or a picture. If, as Jung says, a God is merely "right" because it fits the
is what crosses your path, what feeling good. Now, there are two
ego attitude. Feeling is not the only kinds of feeling good. "Good"
comes in you and is against your cue. People are awfully identified
conscious intention, the image forces doesn't say anything by itself: we
with what they feel. We are overly need to see the images that make
Downloaded by [Carnegie Mellon University] at 17:01 12 January 2015
you to receive it, and even serve it reacting to the rationalism of De~
with your hands, with your words, him feel good and these are very,
cartes, the Victorian age. PSYChIC very different "places to be." The
with your movements. value might lie where our feelings first has the puer prospects of crash-
S.M.: What do you think of ap- most rebel, where the defense is hid- ing, of being spacey, of being spir-
proaches to therapy that stress role ing. Analytic work goes against itually dazzled by "stardom." The
play, becoming the image, the fox? nature, against the naive. Rather second feeling good refers to refind-
J.H.: By becoming the fox, I lose than judge your work by the feel~ng ing and brings with it the rejected
the religiosity of the other, which you have about it, judge your feeling puny feelings of himself which are
carries something different and by the image you are having. By now accepted, even wanted, by this
moves on its own. Is it acceptable to working on images in art therapy we early love. It's pretty evident that
the fox for me to act like a fox. Isn't sophisticate the feeling. feeling good says very little while
it insulting to be imitated? Any theo- S.M.: Is this a guide to the inter- the difference between the girl and
ry of animals has to be acceptable to pretation of art? James Dean, between the high space
the animals. I don't think they rH.: Well, I'm afraid I'll get and the common kitchen, between
would vote for Descartes or St. caught in presenting an opinion and speed and cooking, between the
Thomas. You see, I will not make a taking it literally, so let's move war- power and the puniness-these say
distinction in my respect, in my re- ily. Art gives a feeling-some feel- a lot. Of course, it helps to have a
gard for the animal, between an out- ing-maybe rich and sweet, or even symbolic, archetypal, mythical back-
er gorilla in the Congo and a gorilla repulsion, or most likely upset and ground against which the images
in my fantasy or dream. I am like a bafflement. You have first to feel can be placed, which give the im-
very archaic caveman: what comes what you feel, and then disengage ages depth and cultural resonance. I
to me is the animal and I have to be from it, and look into it. The best mean knowing something about ani-
in good shape not to offend it. way to disengage from the imme- ma helps give that girl more value,
When an indigenous healer puts on diacy of the feeling is to look to the as knowing something about the
a leopard mask, the leopard is there. image. I ask what is the feeling like: puer helps you see the attraction in
He has the leopard's permission. It's describe it. That rich and sweet feel- flying, and so on.
not my ego playing a role. It is ing, makes me see a woman, swoon, S.M.: Psychotherapy training has
bringing the Gods onto the stage. or makes me think of pastry, or I historically placed more emphasis on
The God's, the animals, do the heal-
ing through the masked man. They
know what's what. Instinct is the
word we use in psychology for the
knowing of the Gods and the ani- "Rather than judge your work by the feeling you have
mals. about it, judge your feeling by the image you are hav-
S.M.: You pay less attention to the ing."
ego in a dream or artwork and more
attention to the animals, or other fig-
In the past I was working at it too sibility with him or her into the con- sees and feels things in terms of
hard. I was overly concerned. Thera- sulting room, a possibility "to "problems and troubles." What I try
py is never a one-to-one rela- paint," or "to make love." You see to do with actual cases is discover
tionship. There are many more per- what I mean here? It's not the other the imagination shaping and inform-
sons in the room than the two person, it's the psyche that constel- ing the problems and troubles and
people who think that they are the lates an erotic response. But our then work them out on the level of
only ones there. I do not think that culture, our Christian culture espe- images.
the one-to-one relationship with the cially, because of its repression of Most problems and troubles have
analyst is enough. There has to be a eros and sexuality, because of its de- been worried over by the patient for
relationship to the world. What was ifying "the person," because of its years. I can't add much there. They
wrong for me before, was that my commandment to love confuses us know far more about their lives and
feeling was under a director. An- and we believe we love, or must how they cope that I can advise or
other was the attempt to do therapy love, the other person. inquire into. But what they usually
"very well." But I can't explain a It gets horrifying. Therapists be- don't have are images that can take
thing with biography. These are just come Christian Pygmalions: we not them right out of the Catch 22 situa-
stories. only fall in love with what we are tions that have them trapped.
working on, the other person, but "Should I stay with my drunken
S.M.: You certainly do reverse the believe that this love will bring the husband: should I leave and be on
most fundamental beliefs of the psy- other person to life. Meanwhile we welfare and the kids without a fa-
chotherapeutic community. You aren't making anything, no painting, ther?" Back and forth, in the stew.
have described therapy as a work of no psyche, no nothing. Just indulg- Until one day a black crow comes
love. ing feelings under the self-deception into a dream, or a painting, a talking
IR.: It is a love of the psyche; not that this is therapeutic. crow. I encourage the patient to talk
the other person. We have to be with the old crow, and that bird
S.M.: I am sure that your orienta-
very careful of locating love in the turns out to be very savvy and very
tion to "love of psyche" rather than
personal relationship. Isn't it the tough, and begins to take her (the
to "love of the other" has provoked
same with art? You love the dance, patient) under her wing. And its not
passionate criticism. It can be said
the music-not your dance partner just the figure of the crow, its the
that "you do not seem concerned
or the other person playing in the whole opening of imagination that
with the patient or client as a person
quartet. Of course, your common gets her out of her trappedness-not
in difficulties"; that you are more
engagement brings love into the per- out of the trappedness of the mar-
concerned with "art" and "imagina-
sonal field, but it starts in the love riage, but of the narrow confines of
tion" than with the person's life;
that is at the same time the work. her mind in which she has trapped
that your work "separates art from
her marriage, her mind that could
S.M.: How does this apply to a life and becomes aestheticism or
not imagine beyond that Catch 22
painting? Do you love the painting '1' art pour I'art' images for their own
puzzle. She begins to fantasize and
itself or the psyche that it emerges sake and not for the person's life."
not just worry, to speculate and not
from? IR.: You are right. It does sound just think it all through one more
nose, modes of protection; it is eco- the purpose of initiation, but the iso- tant to keep using the word cow.
logically in the world . . . the ego in lation is still within a context. The Where is your cow? Is it a hurt cow?
the form of Hercules slays the ani- patient needs a context, or ritual, People get upset when an animal
mal. "Ego" is the classic mechanism within the community for the psy- is dying in a dream. A small bird is
of defense. chosis rather than being opposed to dying. Rather than referring to the
Before getting involved with con- the community. Jung does us dam- bird as your dying spirit, you can
cepts of ego, consciousness, specific age in separating the individual from say that this little bird is in dire
pathologies, etc., I want to know the collective, in romanticizing the straits, and has come into your
what the person is doing. In therapy individual. dream. Now what?
I look for a figure to talk to, an ani- S.M.: In our language we use ani- We can learn from fairy tales. The
mal, a rock, an image that the per- mal and herd metaphors dis- person who gets through, is the one
son can relate to. It might be useful paragingly. Pathologogy is con- who speaks to the animals, as op-
to make a circle to sit in, or a person ceived in terms of animals-eating posed to those who ignore the ani-
can go to a stone and sit there with like a hog, bull headed, stubborn as mal or see it as inferior. We have to
his or her back to it ... or a tree. a mule .... "Dog, pig, rat, snake, work our way through the brutal as-
We are trying to find ritualized acts. beast!" The American College Dic- pect of our reactions to animals, and
Breathing is another way. There are tionary defines animal as "an inhu- not project the brutality onto them.
ways to get out of crazy states. A man person; brutish or beastlike per- What you do to the animal, it does
person that I worked with got out by son . . . pertaining to the physical or to you.
just breathing. These modes offer carnal nature of man, rather than his There is a specificity about ani-
imaginal containers. Belief in the spiritual or intellectual nature." You mals. It is very different when an ea-
larger strength, the more important reverse these values and emphasize gle comes to you in a dream than
value of an animal, stone, or tree is the virtues of animals. Humans have when a pig comes. Wherever Islam
what matters. This is animism. a tendency to elevate themselves at went in the 7th and 8th centuries,
S.M.: You bring mind back to the the expense of animals. Our fears of the pigs got it. They were killed as
physical world. sensuousness and of our animal unclean. Pigs have been our com-
nature are revealed in how we form panions for thousands of years, yet
].H.: I do not try to define con- the image of the devil with animal even Christ cast demons into swine.
sciousness. I would never try. I at- and serpentine features. D. H. Law- They are so rejected! When we talk
tempt to find the metaphor that is rence does the reverse too in per- about animals generically in terms of
being used to define consciousness.
S.M.: The arts engage the soul,
and its conflicts, directly, through
the language of the soul, rather than "Through art therapy, we meet disorders of imagination
always feeling the need to translate with imagination. II
the image into psychological con-
cepts for analysis.
our cats and dogs, but do you real- tality of the animal. Some of the old Therapy is caught in the literary
ize how they can read us? This has sentimentality says never hurt an genre of social realism ... not the
to do with external animals, but animal. This relates to Dionysian genre of lyric or epic. Life work is
probably our internal animals are mythology and his being torn apart, perceived as struggle and dense.
watching us, and watching over us, and dismembered by the maenades, Therapeutic work is directed at those
too. and then put back together again. It who are oppressed. It is a depressive
As we get farther away from the is not merely hurtful and ugly-like genre. The concept of social realism
animals in daily life, it worries me. Yankees feel at the bullfight who is closely associated with depres-
What good is it to be in the ecology turn away their eyes. It is an open- sion, working with "hard reality."
movement and still beat the animal ing. It is a ritual, and a different But social realism is a genre, a form
in your dreams. Animals have a nat- motif than talking with the animal or of art. When social realism is com-
ural piety; they don't get out of flying with the animal. The butcher bined with developmentalism and
hand. The human being is not first knows how not to damage the soul the notion that everybody is sup-
in all cultures. With the bushman we of the animal. It is hard for us to posed to grow, it is exhausting. The
are ranked fourth. find the right way to deal with the model produces burn-out. We might
animal because it is either so worth- consider other models to work in, a
S.M.: You are resurrecting an ab-
less or sentimentalized within our totally different context.
original respect for all forms of life.
society.
I.H.: If a bug appears in a dream, If an animal comes to an American S.M.: It is difficult for art thera-
we stamp our feet on it. We want to Indian during a dream, it might be pists to go all the way with the artis-
immediately get the insecticide. the beginning of a vision quest. If a tic metaphor, to stand alone with it.
Going "bugs" is going crazy. The particular animal comes to us, we There is a fear of losing something,
pesticide industry is psychologically need to spend a great deal of time the relationship to the mainstream of
based. In California they realized thinking about it and looking at it. the mental health tradition.
that the total cost of pesticides and We might study its natural history 1.H.: 0 my goodness! "The main-
herbicides is greater per year than and the distinctive features of its stream of the mental health tradi-
the loss of the crops would be if left way of being. Why does the animal tion." Pardon me, but that sounds
untreated. If the Carlos Castenada come to you? What does it want like the KGB! What mainstream?
series were about bugs and worms from you? You mean case management and
instead of eagles, I might like it. workups and files and supervision
S.M.: This animism and your re-
People who have never been with tricks . . . I am being nasty because I
spect for art as a primary therapeutic
animals still have intense animal fa- don't believe that there can be a
metaphor are in sharp contrast to
miliars. They do establish a living mainstream unless there is a spring,
the technological values of contem-
connection with them. I even think a deep source-and now I am con-
porary mental health systems?
it is necessary to go look at animals. tradicting myself regarding "ori-
Ask your patient to take a day in the I.H.: The early psychoanalytic gins." But rivers rise from a deep
aquarium or zoo. The sacred quality community was totally u n- clear riverhead: and what is the
of animals is what I try to get at in technological. It was an artistic com- riverhead of the mainstream in men-
take most for granted, that help us not on the thing and the hands and give form. The classic alchemical for-
to see that what we value the most the image (while working) but on a mula is "dissolve and coagulate." In
may in fact be limiting us. The crea- societal product. Only indirectly is addition to flow there must also be
tion of a different context for the what one makes a societal product. coagulation.
practice of therapy, an artistic con- Of course, all along the struggle S.M.: Can you describe how the
text perhaps, is not easy for the art with invisible community values, the artist or the art therapist might en-
therapist. You are referring to a polit- battle against collective stupidities, is gage destruction?
ical aspect of art therapy. The art going on in the shaping of the prod-
therapist in a hospital setting, or uct. It's the old problem of how to J.H.: Your question is really a very
working with children in a school or keep the moral and social aspect of good one. Or should I say bad
in an agency will not prosper by art from taking over, and yet not los- one.... Let me first make clear that
going against the system. We have ing it altogether in l'art pour l'art. to engage in the patient's destruc-
worked very hard to make favorable When I write something, for in- tion is not to release the devil, or
impressions. stance, I am intensely communal, abreact the emotion. Get it out, get it
out to break up cliches, trying to get down on paper in big red blotches,
J.H.: This is an important ques- or dig your nails into the clay. We
tion. I don't believe much attention my ideas readable, wanting them to
have effect on therapists and be are not in the business of exorcism.
has been paid to the politics of art Devils are resources, and very diffi-
therapy-except for the politics of helpful to souls in their messes.
But-and this "but" is crucial-I cult to distinguish from angels, who
therapy in general (Laing and once had beating animal-wings and
Cooper or the Marxists and the femi- never write directly in that direction:
my main concern as I write is the were fiery and huge. So, if you are
nists). working with destruction you are in-
careful formation of the work itself
S.M.: Minority and cultural groups. and this tends again and again to be terested in it and not trying to get rid
intensely anarchic (individualized), of it. Second, you are not even try-
J.H.: I see an inherent conflict be- ing to improve it so it is less destruc-
tween artistry and art therapy. They forgetting the actual community. I
am often at the point of not caring at tive. Rather, you may be trying to
require different politics. Let's take get its expression more formed,
Blake as the model for artistry: he all if it is ever read by anyone.
more verbal or dimensional, less
was a nut working alone, almost S.M.: You caution against evan- hulky say, and more articulated,
antisocial. The Romantic Artist. Art gelical attitudes toward creativity. where articulated means both more
therapy, however, is paid for by in- verbalized and more jointed and
J.H.: Archetypal theory helps us to
surance companies, state funds, tax- understand that there is always an- connected and differentiated. Then
payers finally. Of course, its aims other side of the coin. When you are third, you have to have some joy in
will bend toward conformism, con- being positive always keep in mind your own destructiveness: I think
servatism. How does the individual Swift must have loved writing his
that there is the negative some-
art therapist work through this di- where. When the negative feeling is hatred into stories and essays. Or
lemma? repressed it will appear. Wherever Bosch and Goya. Therapists are
S.M.: Art therapists are interested you find disturbance, that is where often goody-goodies, or do-gooders,
and awfully ashamed of their hatred uses, which overvalues the "person" I.H.: I learned how quick I shoot
for the patient, or the hatred and an- and undervalues the "art." Certainly off at the mouth! You know ques-
ger that the patient evokes in them. tribal art and medieval art were not tions like this bring out my opinions.
What do you hate? What precisely? projection of the person. No artists, I leap for the bait. An old fish like
Picture it yourself, and get into it but plenty of art. I think this view is me ought to be more wily. I also
with the patient: maybe both of you the ego-artist view; just not interest- learned that I have tremendous sym-
together can work on this hateful ing and it leads to all the psycho-bi- pathy for the plight of art therapists
quality. ography stuff, of dirty-minded gos- . . . they could really be the carriers
sip about people and explaining of imagination into the culture at the
S.M.: Is there any truth to art
their writings or paintings in terms grassroots level. They have access
being a projection of the person?
of their impotency, or mistresses, or that artists themselves don't have,
J.H.: Sure there is, though I prefer drinking, or their poor old mothers. and that psychologists have wasted.
not to see art that way. I think it's But-if you were to imagine "per- I really do want to encourage them
this view of art that art therapy most son" differently, then I'd say, yes, with all my heart.
WRIGHT
srATE
Wright State University
Dayton, Ohio 45435
Master of ArtTherapy
• academicstudy • electiveoptions
• clinical practicum • arts involvement
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