Description

“From the book: ”

“One day in Zurich, I watched a woman being interviewed. She sat in a wheelchair because she was elderly and feeble. She said that she was dead for she had lost her heart. The psychiatrist asked her to place her hand over hery breast to feel her heart beating: it must still be there if she could feel its beat. ‘That, ‘ she said, ‘is not my real heart.’ She and the psychiatrist looked at each other. There was nothing more to say. Like the primitive who has lost his soul, she had lost the loving courageous connection to life – and that is the real heart…..

….I believe the primative and the woman in the hospital: we can and do lose our souls. I believe with Jung that each of us is ‘modern man in search of a soul.'”

“From the Author’s new Postscript: ”

“Maybe the soul isn’t lost; it’s just elsewhere, otherwise engaged. Maybe it’s more involved with the way of the world than with your path of individuation. Maybe it’s not too concerned with human relationships, human moods, human personality development. From the evidence of archaic peoples and ancient philosophies, soul was never altogether in the human arena. But its absence from that arena doesn’t mean that it’s lost.

Why are we numb to the soul in things other than ourselves? Why are we dumb to speak to and with this soul out there? Is it really lost, or fiercely defended against? What investment has our culture in its locus only inside us, and is ‘search’ with all its collaterals like ‘journey, ‘ ‘trials, ‘ and ‘guides’ the right term for reestablishing connection? Might it not be far simpler just to step outside, or walk around your room, and do what the Psalmist said: ‘O taste and see.’Soul is in, or “is,” the very first matter to hand.”

Author: Hillman, James

Topic: Psychology
Media: Book
ISBN: 882145126
Language: English
Pages: 120