Episode 68: On James Hillman's 'The Dream and the Underworld'

In 1979, the American psychologist James Hillman published The Dream and the Underworld, a polemical meditation on the nature of dreams. Rejecting the orthodoxies of both Freud and Jung, Hillman argued that the the "nightworld" of dream should not play second fiddle to the "dayworld" of waking life, because in the soul as on earth, day and night are equally essential, and equally real. To reduce a dream to a message or interpretation is to fail the dream. In order for dreams to do their work on us, says Hillman, we must cease to regard them as hallucinations, mere metaphors, epiphenomena, or illusions, and instead see them as the imaginal other life we all must live. Every night, for Hillman, each of us descends into the underworld to encounter those forces that shape us and our surroundings. The way down is the way up. REFERENCES James Hillman, The Dream and the Underworld T. S. Eliot, "The Hollow Men" Walter Pater, The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry George Steiner, Real Presences Hakim Bey, Orgies of the Hemp Eaters: Cuisine, Slang, Literature and Ritual of Cannabis Culture Erik Davis, High Strangeness: Drugs, Esoterica, and Visionary Experience in the Seventies Brad Warner on drugs and Buddhism Aldous Huxley, The Doors of Perception Jonathan Crary, 24/7: Late Capitalism and the Ends of Sleep Christopher Nolan (dir.), Inception Jorge Luis Borges, "Nightmares" in Seven Nights Henri Bergson, Dreams