On Melancholy and Depression

by James Hillman, Klaus Ottmann (introduction)

Edited by Tom Cheetham and Klaus Ottmann, this volume combines a talk delivered by Hillman in Rome in 1999 on melancholy with an edited transcript of three seminars on the subject of melancholy and depression held at Pacifica Graduate Institute in Carpinteria, “In Defense of Melancholy” (1992), “Depressive Syndromes” (1994), and “The Place of Depression in a Manic Civilization” (2000)."The true revolution begins in the individual who can be true to his or her depression. Neither jerking oneself out of it, caught in cycles of hype and despair, nor suffering it through till it turns, nor theologizing it—but discovering the consciousness and depths it wants. So begins the revolution in behalf of soul."
—James Hillman, Re-Visioning Psychology

182 pages, Paperback

Published December 20, 2024

About the author

James Hillman (1926-2011) was an American psychologist. He served in the US Navy Hospital Corps from 1944 to 1946, after which he attended the Sorbonne in Paris, studying English Literature, and Trinity College, Dublin, graduating with a degree in mental and moral science in 1950.

In 1959, he received his PhD from the University of Zurich, as well as his analyst's diploma from the C.G. Jung Institute and founded a movement toward archetypal psychology, was then appointed as Director of Studies at the institute, a position he held until 1969.

In 1970, Hillman became editor of Spring Publications, a publishing company devoted to advancing Archetypal Psychology as well as publishing books on mythology, philosophy and art. His magnum opus, Re-visioning Psychology, was written in 1975 and nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. Hillman then helped co-found the Dallas Institute for Humanities and Culture in 1978.

Retired into private practice, writing and traveling to lecture, until his death at his home in Connecticut on October 27, 2011 from bone cancer.

Reviews

[Adam Lagerqvist · Rating 5 out of 5]

Some quotes I take with me from this (per usual from Hillman) provocative and intriguing book:

"I have heard other therapists say that therapy only begins when a patient is depressed. It cannot begin before that."

"The patient has not to learn how to get rid of his neurosis but how to bear it."

"So any fantasies about getting better are also tinged with psychic pains. This is one of the cruel paradoxes of depressive treatments - it will only get worse."

"You expand the depression through imagination, through arts and so on. You feed the god in the depression with material, not with introspection."

"Men often enter genuine feeling for the first time when in deep grief, after cheerfulness and excitement have failed for years to bring them there. Private grief can lead them to feel the sorrow of the world."

"And to ask the person, 'What do you really want?', is one of those delusions that there is a person, a single person. There is not a single person, there are multiples, there are pieces that live in the moment even when the person is killing themselves."

"As long as therapy is still concerned with building up the central ego that can cope, it is still working with modernism and has not yet moved into postmodern times. So it is still building up the modernist hero of the biography [...]. Whereas deconstruction would recognize there is no central self, there is no identity, there is no gender identity [...]. The way I see that is that you are what your communal self is at a particular moment. It depends on what community you happen to be in, which changes from time to time, and the inner world, the so-called inner world, is also community."

[Harsh · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Gods have became a disease.
In this book which are actually lecture transcripts from his seminars, Hillman tries to tackle depression, a disease plaguing our modern psyche. A civilization obsessed with speed and change, depression becomes a retardation corrupting the youth (according to society). Hillman tries to show How depression is much as related to Our world as much it is related to us. It's as much of a political and social problem as much it is biological. A intresting read to say the least.