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Psychology is ultimately mythology, the study of the stories of the soul.

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
Ultimately
Study
Stories
Soul
Mythology
Psychology

More quotes by James Hillman

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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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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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I don't think anything changes until ideas change. The usual American viewpoint is to believe that something is wrong with the person.
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Each morning, we return from the dream soul trying to adjust to the day world, that moment when the two souls exchange places in the driver’s seat.
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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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I don't think you can revive traditions on purpose.
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I think there is such a thing as a bad seed that comes to flower in certain people. The danger with that theory is that we begin to look for those troublemakers early on and try to weed them out. That's very dangerous, because it could work against kids who are just routine troublemakers.
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Psychotherapy theory turns it all on you: you are the one who is wrong. If a kid is having trouble or is discouraged, the problem is not just inside the kid it's also in the system, the society.
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It's important to ask yourself, How am I useful to others? What do people want from me? That may very well reveal what you are here for.
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I'm cautious about a lot of words
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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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We need to get back to trusting our emotional rapport with children, to seeing a child's beauty and singling that child out. That's how the mentor system works - you're caught up in the fantasy of another person. Your imagination and their come together.
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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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Economics is a slave-driver. No one has free time no one has any leisure.
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Instead of seeing depression as a dysfunction, it is a functioning phenomenon. It stops you cold, sets you down, makes you damn miserable.
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To hope for nothing, to expect nothing, to demand nothing. This is analytical despair.
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We need to work on the world so it will not be so oppressive.
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It's not enough just to be a mother. It's not only the social pressure on mothers by certain kinds of feminism and other sources. There is also economic pressure on them.
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