Sacred Disorder | Cliff Bostock's blog – 'Finally, I came to regard as sacred the disorder of my mind' (Rimbaud)
Broken-hearted, lost in a labyrinth, encountering angels
PSYCHOLOGICAL LIFE begins in the imagination. That’s one reason I have a sign in my office, dangling from the mantel, that asks clients if they have a dream to share or if something unusual happened since their last session. The latter — odd, sometimes surreal experiences — often communicate at great depth what is going […]
David Brooks “gets” that psychiatry is an art, not science
I’m not a big fan of David Brooks, to say the least. He frequently writes about cultural concerns that have been around for years. Fine. But, as Christopher Lane has observed, he comes across as if he’s sharing revelations that were unknown until he turned on the light of his own brilliance. His May 27 […]
An unearthed poem
I’ve been going through my files lately and came across this (kinda-sorta) poem I wrote 8 years ago or longer. I decided to post it here (a) to keep a record of it and (b) to remind myself how indebted I am to James Hillman, who died a few weeks back. The repeated phrase, “the […]
Thomas Moore reflects on Hillman
Thomas Moore, most known as author of the best-selling Care of the Soul, has a wonderful piece on the Huffington Post about James Hillman. Moore, as he explains, was Hillman’s colleague (or, arguably, his protege) at the Dallas Institute. I interviewed him not long after Care of the Soul was published, but I was already […]
Remembering James Hillman
(NOTE: I have done some editing since first posting this.) James Hillman, whose work I have long regarded as my principal intellectual inspiration, died Thursday, Oct. 27. The New York Times published his obituary with this opening paragraph: James Hillman, a charismatic therapist and best-selling author whose theories about the psyche helped revive interest in […]
How images make it get better
I’ve received a handful of mail and comments (via Facebook) on my last post about the way images can help us confront the contents of the unconscious, so that repressed material can emerge. Although this is sometimes painful, it almost always produces positive gains. Most of the people who wrote asked me to write more […]