This archive has been prepared by Maryanne Barone-Chapman
September – October 2010 – The Executive Committee is pleased to launch the first seminar in the Jungian Psychology Series with David Tacey’s paper, ‘Toward A New Animism: Jung, Hillman and Analytical Psychology.’ From David some points to consider:
The ecological crisis of the contemporary world has urged upon us anew kind of animism, in which the things of the world are alive, animated, spirited, mainly because the body of the world is experiencing pain, pathological symptoms and suffering; the psyche of the world or anima mundi is being discovered in the same way in which psyche was first discovered in suffering individuals.
Hillman’s work draws out contradictions in Jung’s theorizing, and privileges Jung’s post-Cartesian vision and its affirmation of an new kind of animism, which is easily mistaken as pre-modern animism, and hence as regressive.
Hillman’s ‘archetypal psychology’ is an attempt to re-appropriate what had been left out of ‘Jungian’ or ‘analytical psychology’, but what he re-appropriates seems so foreign to established views that it is treated as alien and disruptive.
This paper raises several issues that may be found at the end of the paper after references. More…