Hillman, James (1926-)

Analytical psychologist who studied the relationship of parapsychology to depth psychology. Hillman was born on April 12, 1926, at Atlantic City, New Jersey. He studied at Georgetown University (1943); Sorbonne, University of Paris (1943); and Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland (B.A., 1950; M.A., 1953), and at the University of Zurich (Ph.D. summa cum laude, 1958). After graduation he became an analytical psychologist and director of studies at the C. G. Jung Institute, Zurich. He returned to the United States in 1970 as an editor for Spring Publications in New York (1970-78). He became a professor at the University of Dallas in 1979.

Hillman was the founding associate editor of Envoy: An Irish Review of Literature and Art (1949-51), and wrote a number of books on psychology. His ongoing project, however, is applying psychoanalytic theory to spiritual matters in his writing. His most famous work, however, was initiated during a visit to India when he met the Hindu teacher Gopi Krishna. Gopi Krishna was a retired civil servant from Srinagar who attained a condition of higher consciousness through arousing the legendary kundalini energy of Hindu mysticism. Hillman was favorably impressed and contributed a psychological commentary for Gopi Krishna's book Kundalini: The Evolutionary Energy in Man. The commentary interprets the experiences of Gopi Krishna in relation to Jungian psychology.

Sources:

Gopi Krishna. Kundalini: The Evolutionary Energy in Man. New Dehli: Ramadhar and Hopman, 1967. Reprint, Boulder, Colo.: Shambala, 1970.

Hillman, James. A Blue Fire: Selected Writings. New York: Harper & Row, 1989.

——. The Dream and the Underworld. New York: Harper & Row, 1979.

——. Emotion: A Comprehensive Phenomenology of Theories and their Meanings for Therapy. 1960. Reprint, Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 1961.

——. The Feeling of Function. N.p., 1971.

——. Insearch: Psychology and Religion. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1967.

——. Loose Ends. Dallas: Springhill Publications, 1975.

——. The Myth of Analysis. Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 1972.

——. Pan and The Nightmare. New York: Spring Publications, 1972.

——. Re-visioning Psychology. New York: Harper & Row, 1975.

——. Suicide and the Soul. New York: Harper & Row, 1964.

Pleasants, Helene, ed. Biographical Dictionary of Parapsychology. New York: Helix Press, 1964.