RE-VISIONING PSYCHOLOGY

According to Heidegger, we come too late for the Gods. Not so, says Hillman. They're hidden in the recesses of the collective psyche, in our repressed heritage of Greek mythology and Renaissance paganism. For the Gods are the archetypes of all our experiences and attitudes, the multiform ground of being. They are to be rediscovered in an ""archetypal psychology"" rooted in the concept of soul. Inspired by Freud and especially Jung, Hillman's ""re-visioning' redefines the psyche in terms that are a call to action. We must not reject but cherish ways of experiencing our soul's full range -- including what has been defined in the old, limited, ""monotheistic consciousness"" as psychosis. Hillman urges a ""polytheistic consciousness"" to replace the ego-centered standards of reason and will, to convert the science of psychology to ""soul-making"" framed by the consciousness of many experiential centers -- or many Gods -- in a universe that is more than human. He challenges us to forego the linear, goal-oriented Hebraic quest of salvation or other terminals of experience and risk an odyssey which is its own goal -- experience which takes its meaning from itself. Hillman's language is unnecessarily dense and forbidding, but perhaps it justifies itself in the reader's sense of discovery.