Soul's Code: In Search of Character and Calling by James Hillman

From the Publisher

Plato and the Greeks called it "daimon," the Romans "genius," the Christians "guardian angel"; today we use terms such as "heart," "spirit," and "soul." For James Hillman it is the central and guiding force of his utterly unique and compelling "acorn theory," which proposes that each life is formed by a particular image, an image that is the essence of that life and calls it to a destiny, just as the mighty oak's destiny is written in the tiny acorn. It is a theory that offers a liberating vision of childhood troubles and an exciting approach to themes such as fate and fatalism, character and desire, family influence and freedom, and, most of all, calling - that invisible mystery at the center of every life that speaks to the fundamental question "What is it, in my heart, that I must do, be, and have? And why?" The Soul's Code dedicates itself to what is truly innate, not to how it got this way or where it's going. Hillman does not see human beings as results or, worse, victims of their lives, nor does the promise or even seek a "cure"; instead he welcomes the necessity of every aspect of what makes up a life and advocates using "symptoms" as clues to what the daimon demands. Essentially, Hillman believes that there is more to life - to each individual - than can be explained by the traditional "either/or" categories of genetics and environment. His method is to use the extraordinary (an extensive array of examples from Yehudi Menuhin to Jeffrey Dahmer) as a way to inspire the ordinary, as well as urging his readers to reexamine their childhood impulses, fantasies, thoughts, and even accidents, all of which reflect the "blueprints" that give direction to the course of a biography.

Publishers Weekly

Decades ago, pioneering Jungian analyst and author Hillman (Kinds of Power) challenged the assumptions of Western psychology by applying the ancient concept of "soul" to the modern psyche. Rendered in simpler terms by his protg, bestselling author Thomas Moore, Hillman's work on soul has fed the public imagination with the nourishing idea that we are vastly deeper and more permeable to the influences around us than we may think. Here, Hillman discusses character and calling, introducing an "acorn theory" that claims that "each life is formed by its unique image, an image that is the essence of that life and calls it to a destiny." Borrowing the language of Plato's Myth of Ur, Hillman suggests that this imaginary sense of our lives or callings drives each of us like a personal daimon or force. Drawing on extraordinary lives from Judy Garland to Coco Chanel to Hitler, he describes the movements of the daimon, showing how it can use everything in our environment, from lucky accidents to bad movies, to allow the acorn to "grow down" and express itself in the real material of our lives. Without succumbing to oversimplification or wishful thinking, Hillman challenges the reductive "parental fallacy"the contention that our early experience with our parents determines our selves and our futures. The daimon, he says, pulls us up out of mere conditioning to have a fate. In this brilliant, absorbing work, Hillman dares us to believe that we are each meant to be here; that we are needed by the world around us. Simultaneous Random AudioBook; author tour. (Aug.)

Library Journal

Hillman has written ten books, but he is best known as the inspiration for Thomas Moore's Care of the Soul. Now, for this book on finding one's personal calling, he's getting a big print run himself.

Kirkus Reviews

What set of factors most influence the course of an individual human life? Nature? Nurture? The choices a person makes, including one's intimate relationships? Or is it the complex interplay of all of these? For Jungian analyst and prolific writer Hillman (Kinds of Power, 1995, etc.), the correct answer is apparently "none of the above."

Rather, Hillman focuses single-mindedly on each person's special daimon, an abstract, almost mystical notion lifted from Neoplatonic thought that he defines as "an invisible nonhuman escort," and "the lot your soul chose before you ever took a breath." This daimon, he argues, "the essence" or blueprint of each life, calls us to a very particular destiny, and it does not willingly suffer our neglect. In developing endless variations on this idea, he comes out sounding extraordinarily fatalistic, positing, for instance, that "assassination was written in Gandhi's script." Thus, he largely downplays such basic aspects of the human condition as choice, conflict, ambivalence, chance, irrationality, and madness. And Hillman's intense focus on individuals and their unique fates means that the communal side of life, and specifically altruism and other positive social values, are also given little weight. Finally, as the following passage exemplifies, Hillman's prose often seems both confusingly bloated and maddeningly ethereal: "I am different from everyone else and the same as everyone else; I am different from myself ten years ago and the same as myself ten years ago; my life is a stable chaos, chaotic and repetitive both, and I can never predict what tiny, trivial bit of input will result in a huge and significant output." This, and passages like it, are likely to leave many readers scratching their heads.

This verbose book would have benefitted by being pruned into a stylistically far tighter essay, less declamatory and more reflective.

Product Details

• ISBN: 0446673714
  
• ISBN-13: 9780446673716
• Format: Paperback, 352pp
• Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
• Pub. Date: October 1997
• Sales Rank: 51,101

• Table of Contents

Table of Contents