American Academy of Religion

Review: The Gods and Soul: An Essay-Review

Author(s): David L. Miller
Source: Journal of the American Academy of Religion, Vol. 43, No. 3 (Sep., 1975), pp. 586-590
Published by: Oxford University Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1461854 .
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 The Gods and Soul:
An Essay-Review*
DAVID L. MILLER

N iconoclastic prophetism anda metaphoric reformationin thepublished

version of James Hillman's1972 Terry Lecturesat Yale Universitymake
Re- VisioningPsychologycrucialfor the studyof Religionandat the same
time difficultto review. How is one to reviewa re-view,catching Hillman'sown
episodicargumentby its aphoristictail while hunterand quarryare both running
in circles? It is like trying to see the eye with which one is seeing. Viconian
cyclometryis never easy, but perhaps important.
Hillman'simaginalway of re-viewingpsychologyis seen in his mastertropes.
Personifyingis the re-peoplingof the universeof meaning,seeing imagesin ideas,
and bringing thought to life by seeing life in thought. "Words are persons,"
Hillman notes with the poet, and he adds a psychologist's conclusion:
"Personifyingis the soul's answerto egocentricity."Pathologizingis discoveringa
mythology in symptoms, finding stories in hurts, transforming messes into
variegatedrichness. This is perhaps most crucial of all the tropes, and it leads
Hillmanto say: "Byclingingfaithfullyto the pathologicalperspectivewhichis the
differential root of its discipline, distinguishing it from all others, depth
psychology maintains its integrity, becoming neither humanistic education,
spiritualguidance,social activity, nor secularreligion."Psychologizing(precisely
the opposite of psychologism)is seeingthroughthe literalismof everypositivism,
metamorphosizingthrough metaphor, forsaking both letter and spirit for soul.
Hillman sees literalism psychologically as an ego viewpoint and suggests the
strategyof metaphor(performingone activity as if it wereanother)as peculiarly
felicitous for "soul-making"(his phrase for psychologizing). Hillman wants to
"join Owen Barfieldand Norman Brown in a mafia of the metaphorto protect
plain men from literalism"- and from the egoism of one-dimensional self-
understanding.This leads Hillman to his fourth trope, dehumanizing,which is
understoodas the releaseof the personalinto deepersoul power, a transcendence
of epic voluntarism of ego into the mythological many-facetednature of the
archetypal self (not just Oedipus, but all the presiding metaphors of all the
complexes). Since "humanism'spsychology is the myth of man without myths,"
archetypal psychology means dehumanizing, archetypologizing, re-

*Re- Visioning Psychology. By JAMESHILLMAN.New York: Harper & Row, 1975. xvii+266
pages.$12.50.L.C. No. 74-25691.

DAVID L. MILLER,Professorof Religionat SyracuseUniversity,is presentlyin Francewriting.

He is the author of Gods and Games and The New Polytheism.

586
THE GODS AND SOUL 587

mythologizing, and theologizing. "A re-vision of psychology," says Hillman,

"meansrecognizingthat psychologydoes not take placewithoutreligion,because
thereis alwaysa God in what we aredoing."Just the same, Hillmanwishesneither
to psychologizereligionnor to redeemit: "Archetypalpsychology'sconcernis not
with the revival of religion, but with the survival of soul." A glance at the
topography of Hillman'sargumentwill begin to demonstratehow the gods and
soul-powerconnect.

TOPOGRAPHY

1. Psychology. Hillman is to Jungian psychology as Norman O. Brown is to

Freudianand as Ronald D. Laingis to Existentialist.Formallyspeaking,though
they disagreestronglyin content, they are all radical revisionists.Hillman'snew
work makes this observationparticularlycompellingwhen seen in relationto his
earlier writings. Re- Visioning Psychology stands in referenceto the rest of the
corpus (principally The Myth of Analysis; Insearch; Suicide and the Soul;
Emotion; and the essays on Pan, Kundalini, Feeling, Anima, and the Child) as
Brown'sLove's Body and Laing'sKnotsareto theirearlierworks(principallyLife
Against Death and TheDivided Self, respectively).Languagein the laterworksof
each man explodes. The text approaches poetry, stopping just short of lyric in
aphorism. The "argument,"if such a term is proper to the mode of thinking in
Knots, Love's Body, and Re- VisioningPsychology, is "episodicand circular."A
prose organizationof Hillman'sbook may fool the readerinto not noticing that
actuallythe work has no rigidbeginningor ending,a characteristicthat the author
has himselfacknowledged.As Brown's,Laing's,and Hillman'sbooks "end,"the
texts turn back upon themselves,like literateMoebius strips,and what may have
seemedto have been statementsin an argumentturninto self-implicatinginsights.
The whole vanishes, leaving the reader with nothing to see, but with something
much more valuable:a way of seeing. So Hillman can write:
The psychological mirrorthat walksdownthe road,the KnightErranton his
adventure,the scroungingrogue,is alsoanodd-jobman,likeErostheCarpenter
whojoinsthisbitwiththat,a handyman, a bricoleur- like"aballrebounding, a
dog strayingor a horseswervingfromits directcourse"- psychologizing upon
andaboutwhatis at hand;nota systems-architect, a plannerwithdirections.
And
leaving,beforecompletion,suggestion hangingin theair,anindirection,an open
phrase.... (p. 164)
2. Philosophy. Such errancy talk as this and the observation of a formal
relation between Hillman'sbook and the latter-daythinkingof Brownand Laing
brings to mind Wittgensteinand Heidegger.Like the works of these men, Re-
Visioning Psychology goes beyond traditional metaphysics, at least beyond a
psychology which is trapped by Cartesian rationalism and Aristotelian
substantialismin ideasabout the self. The transcendentleap-froggingappears,not
in the weightymannerof Heideggerin Beingand lime, nor in the gamey manner
of Wittgensteinin the Tractatus;rather,Re- VisioningPsychologyis morelike the
later philosophicalwritingsof Heideggerand Wittgenstein.Hillman'snew book
standsin relationto his previousworkexactly as Heidegger'sGelassenheitand the
essays on poetry are to Being and Time, and as Wittgenstein'sPhilosophical
Investigations are to the Tractatus and the later essays. The Hillmanian
breakthrough from rationalism and substantialism is also indicated,
588 DAVID L. MILLER

philosophically, by his move behind Descartes and Aristotle to Plato and

Heraclitus. Hillman is clearly a self-conscious friend of the Renaissance neo-
platonists, which leads to a third way of placing his work.
3. Letters. In the realm of ideas Hillman's soul-mates are Gnosticism,
Alchemy, and Romanticism (especially William Blake). Yet all traces of
relativism, subjectivism, and psychologism are gone. They are precisely the
enemy, for they representthe ego turned inward upon its epic, voluntaristic,
rational,and heroicself. Hillman'sviewingis archetypaland collective. However,
it is not collective in the sociological sense, but in some verticalresonancethat
becomes trans-personal(he notes that in the term bathos, as used by Heraclitus,
depth was not distinguishedfrom height). Psyche (soul) is not in the personalself
(ego), but the self is in objectivesoul. Mythology is the universallocation where
soul makes itself manifestin some non-relativisticand non-solipsisticsense. This
places Hillman'sworkalso in relationto Picasso and Joyce for whom mythology
was so important. Indeed, like Freud'swork which, as Hillman notes, won the
Goetheprizefor literatureratherthanthe Nobel Prizefor medicine,Re- Visioning
Psychology fits most appropriately in the realm of imaginal psychology. Its
creativityis manifestin the "helterskelter"form of the book. Digressionsinterrupt
the sequencesin the text by coming out of the blue. Thematicmaterialsare often
expressedparadoxicallyand seldom move developlentally. But the creativityis
also found in the substance of the work's metaphoric imagery. This occurs
however not without tough-headedand iconoclastic thinking.
4. Theology.Iconoclasmsuggests prophetismand protestantism.To say that
Hillman'swork is protestantwill be offensiveto its author. He spendsmuchspace
in the final sections of the book bemoaning the Germanic,Protestanttone of
contemporarypsychologywith its "literalismand voluntarism."He says: "Itdoes
not matter whether we are behaviorists or strict Freudians, whether we are
engaged in self-masteryor self-surrender,introspectionor statistics, or whether
we try to break loose with glossolalia, creative painting, and nude encounters,
psychologyremainstrueto its Reformationalbackground"(p. 220). That Hillman
feels negatively about such Reformation psychology becomes clear when he
remarksthat all that is accomplishedby it is that "theweight and seriousnessof
psychotherapy(even in the Californiasurnshineschools) createin its participants
new loads of guilt, now in regardto the moralityof its therapeuticaims"(p. 221).
Yet in spite of Hillman'santi-Protestant talk, nay, precisely because of his
protestant iconoclasm against Protestantism, Re- Visioning Psychology is
protestant.It is not this in the socio-historicalsense that the author is seeing the
ProtestantReformation, but ratherin Paul Tillich'stheo-philosophicalsense of
"the protestant principle,"where there abound categories of the autonomy of
graceand sin, the priesthoodof all believers,and the bondage of the heroicwill of
spirit in matters of ultimate meaning. All these notions, and especially that of
priesthoodof all believers,implicatethe "protestantprinciple"in an unconscious
conspiracywith Hillmanin the direction of incipientpolytheism,a function that
shows itself in the many denominationsand sects that have flourishedwithin the
"protestant"framework.
Hillmanlocates himself in this symbolic and metaphoricprotestantizing,but
not with northern Europeanchurchism,when he writes on "The Empireof the
Roman Ego: Decline and Falling Apart."In this section he is carefulto note the
close connection between Roman imperialismin religionand society, on the one
THE GODS AND SOUL 589

hand, and the psychologicalfantasy of heroic egoism, on the other. Hillmansays:

"Ifit is common today to fantasy our cultureagainst that of old Rome, it is partly
because our psyche has undergone a long Pax Romana." But now "central
command is losing control" (p. 26). Theologically this puts Re- Visioning
Psychology near Luther and opposed to popery, but of course also in direct
opposition to sixteenth-centuryProtestant scholasticismand Pharisaism.
Ex UNO PLURES
In all of this Hillmanhas associatedhimselfwith a numberof writerswho have
argued,not only for radicalpluralismin self and society, but for cosmic and ontic
polytheism.VincentVycinas'Searchfor Gods(Nijhoff, 1972),the new translation
of Alain's Les Dieux (New Directions, 1974),and E. M. Cioran's TheNew Gods
(Quadrangle,1974)arejust a few examples. For Vycinasthe philosophicaltask is
to searchfor the gods during the twilight of the gods becausethe gods "carrythe
meaningsand the realness of things." For Alain, "the gods are everywhere...
Wherethereis only a man, there is a god." And to Cioran,"monotheismcontains
the germof everyform of tyranny."The questionin thesetheorizings,as in that of
Hillman, is why in the plursignificationof meaning, in the radical or ethnic
pluralismof society, in the polyvalenceof the self, in the generalattack on one-
dimensionalmeaning-and symbol-systems- why in all of these is thererequired
the additionalstep to polytheism,to the gods? Arethe gods of polytheismany less
dead or eclipsed than the God of monotheism?
Perhapsit was Sigmund Freud who began to make inroadson this question.
When single-mindedreligious meaning - the moralisticand doctrinalmeaning
of Torahand Creed - failed in the lives of individuals,two thingswerenoted:(1)
the meaningwas likely projectedin the first place out of a memory and out of a
personalneed for completion,and (2) the full experienceof the lack (the death of
God) could not be therapeuticallyfruitfuluntil the personal narrativeand need
were broken through by a transpersonalcontext (e.g., Oedipus). Carl Jung's
experiencewas similar,but even more radical. Freudhad noted manycomplexes,
each with a singlearchaicstructure(not only Oedipus,but Erosand Thanatosand
so on). For Jungeach complex has more than one archetype:the anima-complex
may be informedby Artemis,Helen, Psyche, Electra,Eileithyia,Kastalia,and/or
many others. It is Hillman,however,who shows why the recoveryof soul poweris
ineluctablytied in his own work,as in that of Freudand Jung,to gods - precisely
at the moment of God's being called into question as a source of deep meaning.
Hillman'sargumentand his method is one of "reversion,"and it is based on a
view of memoriathat is found firstin St. Augustine.Hillmandiscoversin personal
moods a numberof fantasies.Withineach fantasy(a narrativestructureimagined
in biographicalmemoria)there is a complex. Withineach complex there are, in
the manner of Jung, many archetypes. Each archetypehas its articulationin a
myth. And a god or goddess presidesover each myth. "Reversion"is not a new
mode of diagnosis; it is rather a way - a way to get purchase on one's own
experienceof the events of life. It makeseventseventful.In the storiesof universal
memory chronos becomes kairos. What otherwise may be causal and logical is
now experienced synchronisticallyas a narrative sequence, a plot. Ideas and
thoughts become images and persons.
It is not that we must find some gods when God succumbsin culture or life-
experience. It is that the gods are there already, released by the death of
590 DAVID L. MILLER

monotheisticthinking whose imperialismcaused us to think that the

pandaemonium andthepolytheismhadleft.Whenthebottomdropsoutof social
and personalmeaning,the sufferingof pathologyrevealsthe manynessof
extremitypreciselyin the formof thepersonaeof the gods and goddesses.
Thisshouldcomeasno surprise.AlreadyAristotlehadsaidin theMetaphysics
thatall of Homer'spantheonwereresidentin hisideas.AndWittgenstein, at the
otherend of our traditionof thinking,told us thatpicturesweretrappedin the
syntaxof our abstractlanguage.FrancisCornford,in makingthe connection
betweenAristotleand Wittgenstein, revealedthe picturesto be mythologia.The
point is that a viable transcendental referentfunctionslike a lowestcommon
denominatorfor referentialmeaningin discourse.It is crucialto univocal
meaning.Butif no god-termorgod-term-function operatesin languageor in life,
all meaningsareloosedat once.Goddiesandthegodsareloosed - andin the
Westerngrammarof meaningthis meansthe Greekpantheonout of whose
mythologicalparataxes,as Aristotleknew, our philosophicaland theological
syntacticalformsweregivensubjectiveand predicativeshape.
Wittgenstein's fly-bottleis filledwith Furies(cf. Sartre).Thetrickis to know
how,likeAthenain the Oresteia,to takeadvantageof thepoeticpowerof syntax
preciselyin its failure,transforming confusioninto the multivalentmeaningof
poesy. Hillmanseemsto know Athena'strick.It has to do withpersonifying,
psychologizing,pathologizing,and dehumanizing.That is, it has to do with
noticingthat the relationbetweenthe powerof soul-makingand the gods is
metaphor:the deliteralizingof thinkinginvolves one necessarilyin a re-
mythologizingof life. Americantheologyalmost got this point in the post-
Bultmannian hermeneutical discussions.Whatwas missingtherewas not spirit
butsoul. It willyet takean appropriation in religiousstudiesof a psychologyof
religionlike Hillman'sin orderthatthefullpowerof metaphormaybefelt in the
thinkingof soul (psychology)and in the thinkingaboutreligion(theology).
The questionis not whetherthereare gods and goddesses.Thequestionis
whethertheyshallbea resourceoran inundating andundifferentiated confusion,
a Babel without names. This latter is fragmentation,but fragmentation's
articulatenameis polytheism.