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

Weird Studies

Phil Ford and J. F. Martel

Society & Culture, Arts, Philosophy

4.8 • 688 Ratings

🗓️ 18 March 2020

⏱️ 75 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

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 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Spectrevision Radio
0:02.0	Welcome to Weird Studies, an arts and philosophy podcast with hosts Phil Ford and J.F. Martel.
0:23.3	For more episodes or to support the podcast, go to weirdst. I'm J.F. Martel. According to Jorge Louis Borges, the most astonishing thing
0:56.9	about dreams isn't their psychic function, the biological mechanism that undergirds them, or even
1:02.2	their nature, but the simple fact that they exist at all. What are they? Why do they happen? This
1:09.3	episode is all about dreams. More specifically, it's about
1:12.8	the American psychologist James Hillman's great 1979 work, the dream and the underworld.
1:19.0	More than anything else out there, Hillman's seminal meditation refrains from imposing any
1:24.4	rational structure on the phenomenon of dreaming. Instead, it invites us to revel with
1:29.8	awe in the fact of dreaming as an integral part of our mysterious reality. Dreams, of course, were a
1:36.4	favorite topic of ours as early as episodes 12 and 13, respectively on the films of Rodney Asher
1:42.2	and the philosophy of Heraclytus.
1:44.7	More recently, in October of last year, Phil and I exchange letters on the Weird Studies
1:49.7	Patreon about a dream Phil had, a dream that gains special significance in light of the
1:54.5	events that have since altered the world. I quote selectively from Phil's letter.
2:00.0	I had a nightmare a few nights ago.
2:02.4	A real swinger of a nightmare, as Frank Sinatra might say.
2:06.3	It had no narrative to speak of, only a single terrifying image.
2:10.6	I am looking through a doorway at a dining room in an ordinary looking house.
2:15.4	It doesn't look like my house, just some generic suburban sort of place,
2:19.8	though maybe a bit nicer than average.
2:22.4	There's a big wooden table at the center.
	...

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