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 . Accessed: 16/10/2011 12:35
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The Gods and Soul: An Essay-Review*

DAVID L. MILLER

in N iconoclastic reformation thepublished and prophetism a metaphoric 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: is Pathologizingis discoveringa "Personifying the soul's answerto egocentricity." 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 selfunderstanding.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's psychology is the myth of man without myths," means dehumanizing, archetypologizing, rearchetypal psychology
*Re- Visioning Psychology. By JAMESHILLMAN.New York: Harper & Row, 1975. xvii+266

pages.$12.50.L.C. No. 74-25691.

DAVID

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

L. MILLER,Professor Religionat SyracuseUniversity, presently France is in of writing.

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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: "Archetypal psychology'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 observationparticularly compellingwhen 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 if aphorism. The "argument," such a term is proper to the mode of thinking in A Knots, Love's Body, and Re- VisioningPsychology, is "episodicand circular." prose organizationof Hillman'sbook may fool the readerinto not noticing that that actuallythe work has no rigidbeginningor ending,a characteristic 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-implicating insights. The whole vanishes, leaving the reader with nothing to see, but with something much more valuable:a way of seeing. So Hillman can write: on that walksdownthe road,the Knight The psychological mirror Errant his is the adventure, scrounging man,likeErostheCarpenter rogue, alsoanodd-job whojoinsthisbitwiththat,a handyman, bricoleur like"aballrebounding, a a fromits direct course" psychologizing or dog straying a horseswerving upon andaboutwhatis at hand; a systems-architect, not a planner directions. with And in an before completion, suggestion leaving, hanging theair,anindirection, 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, ReVisioning Psychology goes beyond traditional metaphysics, at least beyond a psychology which is trapped by Cartesian rationalism and Aristotelian in substantialism ideasabout the self. The transcendent leap-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'sGelassenheit the and 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,

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philosophically, by his move behind Descartes and Aristotle to Plato and Heraclitus. Hillman is clearly a self-conscious friend of the Renaissance neoplatonists, 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-relativistic and 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 skelter" form of the book. Digressionsinterrupt creativityis manifestin the "helter 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 and contemporarypsychologywith its "literalism 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" 220). That Hillman (p. 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 Californiasurnshine schools) 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 in priesthoodof all believers,implicatethe "protestant principle" an unconscious conspiracywith Hillmanin the direction of incipientpolytheism,a function that shows itself in the many denominationsand sects that have flourishedwithin the framework. "protestant" 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

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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'Search Gods(Nijhoff, 1972),the new translation for 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 "carry the meaningsand the realness of things." For Alain, "the gods are everywhere... Wherethereis only a man, there is a god." And to Cioran,"monotheism contains 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 onedimensionalmeaning-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," it is based on a and 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" not a new is 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 lifeexperience. It is that the gods are there already, released by the death of

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monotheisticthinking whose imperialismcaused us to think that the and had the dropsoutof social pandaemonium thepolytheism left.When bottom and personalmeaning,the sufferingof pathologyrevealsthe manynessof in extremity precisely the formof thepersonaeof the gods and goddesses. Thisshould comeasno surprise. had Aristotle saidin theMetaphysics Already at in thatall of Homer's wereresident hisideas.AndWittgenstein, the pantheon in of weretrapped the otherend of our tradition thinking, us thatpictures told in FrancisCornford, makingthe connection syntaxof our abstract language. The the to between Aristotle Wittgenstein, and revealed pictures be mythologia. is that a viabletranscendental referent functionslike a lowestcommon point denominator referential for meaningin discourse.It is crucialto univocal in or But or operates language in life, meaning. if no god-term god-term-function all meanings loosedat once.Goddiesandthegodsareloosed - andin the are of Western grammar meaningthis meansthe Greekpantheonout of whose and as mythological parataxes, Aristotleknew, our philosophical theological formsweregivensubjective predicative and syntactical shape. is The Wittgenstein's fly-bottle filledwith Furies(cf. Sartre). trickis to know in to of how,likeAthena the Oresteia, takeadvantage thepoeticpowerof syntax of in confusion into the multivalent precisely its failure,transforming meaning seemsto know Athena's trick.It has to do withpersonifying, poesy. Hillman and That is, it has to do with psychologizing, pathologizing, dehumanizing. and noticingthat the relationbetweenthe powerof soul-making the gods is of in metaphor:the deliteralizing thinkinginvolves one necessarily a reof mythologizing life. American theologyalmost got this point in the postBultmannian hermeneutical Whatwas missingtherewas not spirit discussions. butsoul. It willyet takean appropriation religious of in studiesof a psychology like in that religion Hillman's order thefullpowerof metaphor befelt in the may of and aboutreligion(theology). thinking soul (psychology) in the thinking The questionis not whether thereare gods and goddesses. questionis The whether shallbea resource an inundating undifferentiated or and confusion, they a Babel without names. This latter is fragmentation, fragmentation's but articulate nameis polytheism.