A Jungian on Adolescent rebellion and Dionysian wildness!

Healing Fiction

Author: James Hillman

So well, this is the third in the Jungian series.

Hillman is a leading scholar in Jungian and Post-Jungian thought, and the founder of the vibrant field of Archetypal Psychology, that emphasizes much on the importance of imagination both in the experience of psyche and in life itself. (Ain’t this liner ring a bell on the Counterfactual Imagination!)

James Hillman was indeed blessed to have studied with the great Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung in the 1950s and the “Jungian” quite pervades his works too!

At the same time, Like Jung deviates much-o-much from Freud and propounds his own interesting propositions, Hillman also deviates great-o-great from Jung and comes out with some interesting propositions. One such concept is the ‘Acorn theory’!

In his bestseller The Soul's Code, he proposed that our calling in life is inborn and that it is our mission in life to realize its imperatives. This he calls the "acorn theory" — the idea that our lives are formed by a particular image, just as the oak's destiny is contained in the tiny acorn.

Hillman suggests that adolescent rebellion and Dionysian wildness is not something to be treated but something that the world requires. (Again, ain’t this cut much ice with the previous two reads on the ‘wild’!)

Now, coming over to one of his masterpiece of sorts, Healing Fiction!

Well, to put it simply, Hillman asks the basic question, "What does the soul want?"

And with such profound insight and wild humor he answers, "It wants fictions that heal."

How trueeey!

Examining the three great originators of depth psychology - Freud, Jung, and Adler the book explores on some of the interesting concepts in Psychology like - what is really meant by "case history", "active imagination" and "inferiority feelings".

As many passionate fans to Healing Fiction have quite suggested, it is probably good to begin with the third chapter (What Does the Soul Want?), then read chapters one and two. The emphasis is on the soul (not in a religious sense, but the soul as "psyche") and the needs of the "inner voice."

From that point, the use of the case study is developed as a "healing fiction."

In the development of that healing fiction, certain symbols, images, and signs are used.

Each person, or soul, develops his or her own healing fiction as it strives to reach a balance.

Gels so well with Joseph Campbell’s, yet another mind who was strongly influenced by Jung.

So yesss! that takes us to Joseph Campbell, next on the line!