The profound impact of James Hillman on the founding of the Dallas Institute cannot be overstated. His collaboration with the Founding Fellows in bringing new ideas, a depth of soul, and a capacity of seeing the centrality of imagination helped every dimension of the Institute achieve its ideals. His international teaching brought recognition to the Dallas Institute from every quarter of the world. His abiding love for beauty as essential to anything lasting resonates coherently with the original and abiding aims of the Institute. His ever-new and surprising capacity for relevant thought, the kind of reflection needed for the future of Dallas and indeed for the life and development of culture, made him a permanent colleague, friend, and advisor to the endeavors of the city.
Dr. Hillman, while residing in Zurich, came to Dallas in the late seventies at the invitation of Robert Sardello, who was at the time Chairman of the Psychology Department of the University of Dallas. Enchanted with Dallas and charmed by its hospitality, Hillman asked Robert Sardello and the University of Dallas Psychology Department, aided by Joanne Stroud and Gail Thomas, to host the First International Archetypal Psychology Conference in January 1977. Twenty-five archetypal psychology scholars and therapists came from around the world to the major event, which served as a catalyst for spawning this important work in varying fields of the humanities in the U.S. and abroad. It was at this event that Sardello, Stroud, and Thomas, with the blessings of Donald and Louise Cowan, invited James Hillman to leave Europe, reside in Dallas, move Spring Publications here, and teach at the University of Dallas. Three years later, after making several trips to Dallas, teaching, and becoming intensely interested in the city, he was directly involved in the founding of the Dallas Institute of Humanities and Culture and continued to return to Dallas and teach at the Dallas Institute until his death. He brought much of the work and imagination of the Dallas Institute to some of the great cities of the world, receiving the key to the city of Rome, as well as teaching in Paris, Tokyo, and other international venues.
Born in Atlantic City, James Hillman served in the US Navy Hospital Corps and then attended the Sorbonne in Paris and Trinity College in Dublin. He received his PhD from the University of Zurich and his analyst's diploma from the C.G. Jung Institute, where he served as Director of Studies until 1969. In 1970, Dr. Hillman became editor of Spring Publications, a journal devoted to Jungian Studies and Archetypal Psychology. His numerous books have changed the course of psychology around the world: Re-visioning Psychology, 1975, was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize; The Soul's Code: In Search of Character and Calling, was on The New York Times Best Seller List in 1979; Pan and the Nightmare; Suicide and the Soul; Anima; Inter Views; The Myth of Analysis: Three Essays in Archetypal Psychology; The Dream and the Underworld; Loose Ends: Primary Papers in Archetypal Psychology; A Terrible Love of War; Kinds of Power: A Guide to its Intelligent Uses; Healing Fiction; The Thought of the Heart and the Soul of the World; The latest series, published by Spring Publications in conjunction with Dallas Institute Publications, is the Uniform Edition and includes City and Soul, Senex and Puer, Archetypal Psychology, Animal Presences, and Mythic Figures.
James Hillman--relished clarity and direct thought. He toe-tapped on our wood floors and challenged us to rethink the common sensual world we share. He could quote baseball scores or the wisdom of Plato with equal gusto. No one equaled him in the energy to pierce difficult subjects. He ruffled our complacency with subjects such as "Suicide and the Soul." Jim, as we called him when we knew him at the first American Archetypal Conference at the University of Dallas in 1976, also shot his sentences through with impish humor. How can the whole area of images, of imagination in dynamic motion, and of exploration of the invisible world behind the actual ever be the same without your stimulating comments?
Words from Thomas Moore