Loose Ends

Blending case histories with myth, clinical fact with imaginative meaning, this book, with its profound appreciation of history and biography, of the arts, ideas, and culture, trains the senses to perceive the face of the soul. In papers on abandonment, nostalgia, betrayal, schism, failure, and masturbation, Hillman shows that pathology belongs intrinsically to the psyche and that it reveals the unchanging, necessary, fecund depths of human nature. “A Brief Note on Story” pleads for a “story sense,” a deeply therapeutic awareness of how mythic persons and archetypal events influence the psyche by conditioning perceptions, generating meanings, and shaping our lives, while another essay associates archetypal psychology with neoplatonism, the elegant, cultured, psychological vision of Plotinus, Ficino, and Vico. Together, these twelve essays and talks affirm the polyvalent, shadowed reality of the psyche and afford an example of subtle, nuanced psychological thought. For psychotherapists, analysts, counselors, and the general reader.