Order from a Major Online Bookstore
Ultimate Book Price Comparison Engine
Save Your Time And Money
| AnyBook4Less.com | Order from a Major Online Bookstore |
|
| Home | Store List | FAQ | Contact Us | | ||
| Ultimate Book Price Comparison Engine Save Your Time And Money |
||
 |
Title: The Soul's Code : In Search of Character and Calling by James Hillman ISBN: 0-446-67371-4 Publisher: Warner Books Pub. Date: 01 October, 1997 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.69 (39 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: Poetic Iconoclast
Comment: What is most charming about Hillman's book is his writing style. It verges on the poetic. His work is challenging and yet fulfilling to read. It is not easy reading and it is not petty at all. Every statement of his is pregnant that reading it as if it were some fiction novel would be a great disservice to the author. Each sentence must be dwelt and meditated upon to crack the shell and expose the living fruit. Like the acorn Hillman's ideas are condensed into such a compact form from which a whole tree of ideas and images can blossom forth.
Hillman is tantalizing, provocative, always the iconoclast who will not allow the dust to settle and peace reign. Instead of promoting the growing up paradigm of humanistic psychology he says we grow down. Instead of a developmental model he points us to calling as transtemporal. Like that first century Jewish rabbi Hillman plows right through the orthodoxy of both religion and psychology. And in so doing courts crucifixion by both sides. Hillman will not allow any stagnation and polarization of perspective. He piques and peeves without let that we may not die in the tranquility of the status quo. Forever the gadfly nothing is sacred to him--no idea, no theology, no science--except the stirrings of the soul.
Hillman's courage to challenge academic psychology will earn him the ire and derision of today's priests of the mind and soul. But his works pave the way for the return of the soul and its gods as proper and crucial subjects of psychology.
Rating: 4
Summary: Ideas as Art
Comment: Like other Hillman books I have read, The Souls Code seems best read as a myth rather than a statement of metaphysical reality. The myth either resonates or not. The Soul's Code thesis that human beings are born with a daimon - an encoded destiny - is best judged as an artistic work of imagination rather than an assertion of objective truth. I found Soul's Code well worth reading for its many provacative and creative ideas but less resonant than several other Hillman works such as Re-Visioning Psychology in which Hillman sets forth his vision of the human psyche as essentially plural, and the essay Peaks and Vales, which draws a fascinating distinction between spirit and soul.
I can't quite reconcile Hillman's notion of a destiny (which seems psychologically monotheistic) with his image of the polytheistic personality, which I understand to be one of the bedrock assumptions of archetypal physchology. If the human psyche contains many persons, it would seem that the pursuit of a destiny would require repression of the many selves and inflation.
I enjoyed Hillman's challenges to psychotherapy, which I believe has a huge power shadow. I agree that the fantasy that parenting is the source of all adult misery should be rejected. I believe, however, that Hillman may have misrepresented family system therapy as promoting this view. In my experience, the goal of family system therapy is to establish an adult to adult relationship that includes the capacity to know one's parents in their complexity. Parental wounds become only one element in a much larger and more paradoxical story. I also found it interesting that Hillman seems to disagree with his friend and colleague Robert Bly by questioning the notion that the "absent father" is a fundamental source of male woundedness. One last point: I thought the section entitled Loneliness and Exile (p. 53) was particularly profound and moving.
My favorite passage from the book:
...you find your genius by looking in the mirror of your life. Your visible image shows your inner truth, so when you're estimating others, what you see is what you get. It therefore becomes critically important to see generously, or you will get only what you see; to see sharply, so that you discern the mix of traits rather than a generalized lump; and to see deeply into dark shadows, or else you will be deceived." (p.259)
Rating: 5
Summary: This is a superb Book!
Comment: If your searching for something, looking for some direction, feel lost or depressed, this is a great book to read. It really provides a context from which to view you life from and COULD be all you need to get you back in the groove.
 |
Title: The Force of Character : And the Lasting Life by James Hillman ISBN: 0345424050 Publisher: Ballantine Books Pub. Date: 05 July, 2000 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
 |
Title: A Blue Fire by James Hillman ISBN: 0060921013 Publisher: Perennial Pub. Date: 11 September, 1991 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
 |
Title: Re-Visioning Psychology by James Hillman ISBN: 0060905638 Publisher: Perennial Pub. Date: 28 January, 1978 List Price(USD): $15.95 |
 |
Title: Reality Isn't What It Used to Be : Theatrical Politics, Ready-to-Wear Religion, Global Myths, Primitive Chic, and O by Walter Truet Anderson ISBN: 0062500171 Publisher: Harper SanFrancisco Pub. Date: 14 February, 1992 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
 |
Title: An Introductory Guide to Post-Structuralism and Postmodernism by Madan Sarup ISBN: 0820315311 Publisher: University of Georgia Press Pub. Date: June, 1993 List Price(USD): $21.95 |
Thank you for visiting www.AnyBook4Less.com and enjoy your savings!
Copyright� 2001-2021 Send your comments
