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The word power has such a generally negative implication in our society. What are people talking about? Are they talking about muscles, or control?

James Hillman

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James Hillman
Age: 85 †
Born: 1926
Born: April 12
Died: 2011
Died: October 27
Non-Fiction Writer
Philosopher
Psychologist
Atlantic City
New Jersey
Word
Talking
Society
Implication
Power
Implications
People
Muscles
Generally
Negative
Control

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It's very hard in our adversarial society to find a third view. Take journalism, where everything is always presented as one person against another: Now we're going to hear the opposing view. There is never a third view.
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Each person enters the world called, like an oak tree, to fulfill their soul’s agenda.
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The psyche is highly flammable material. So we are always wrapping things in asbestos, keeping our images and fantasies at arm's length because they are so full of love
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The moment the angel enters a life it enters an environment. We are ecological from day one.
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The idea of death robs inquiry of its passionate vitality and empties our efforts of their purpose by coming to one predestined conclusion, death. Why inquire if you already know the answer?
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Art, for example, becomes art therapy. When patients make music, it becomes music therapy. When the arts are used for therapy in this way, they are degraded to a secondary position.
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People used to trust their doctor. They went to an expert. Now people have new ideas and are thinking for themselves. That's a very important change in our collective psychology.
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We're an air bag society that wants guarantees on everything that we buy. We want to be able to take everything back and get another one. We want a 401-k plan and Social Security.
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It's better to go into the world half-cocked than not to go into the world at all.
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Beauty is something everybody longs for, needs, and tries to obtain in some way - whether through nature, or a man or a woman, or music, or whatever. The soul yearns for it. Psychology seems to have forgotten that.
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The Greek idea of fate is moira, which means portion. Fate rules a portion of your life. But there is more to life than just fate. There is also genetics, environment, economics, and so on. So it's not all written in the book before you get here, such that you don't have to do anything. That's fatalism.
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Fear is a huge thing for older people.
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I don't think you can revive traditions on purpose.
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We have to give value to authority. We have to give value to office, being in office, holding office.
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You don't attack the grunts of Vietnam you blame the theory behind the war. Nobody who fought in that war was at fault. It was the war itself that was at fault.
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Loss means losing what was. We want to change but we don't want to lose. Without time for loss, we don't have time for soul.
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I see happiness as a by-product. I don't think you can pursue happiness. I think that phrase is one of the very few mistakes the Founding Fathers made
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The culture is going into a psychological depression. We are concerned about our place in the world, about being competitive: Will my children have as much as I have? Will I ever own my own home? How can I pay for a new car? Are immigrants taking away my white world?
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Depression opens the door to beauty of some kind.
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The new age self-help phenomenon is pretty mushy, but it's also very American. Our history is filled with traveling preachers and quack medicine and searches for the soul. I don't see this as a new thing. I think the new age is part of a phenomenon that's been there all along.
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