ARTICLES on / By James Hillman

Why Archetypal Psychology?
An Editorial Postscript to Spring Magazine 1970

Psychology: Monotheistic or Polytheistic
Spring Magazine 1971; Postscript in "The New Polytheism," by David L. Miller, 1981.

Peaks and Vales
from the "Puer Papers," 1976.

Image Sense
from Spring Magazine 1979

DICTIONARY OF ANALYTICAL PSYCHOLOGY by ROBERT WINER

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Sample of Dictionary Entries:

Abaissement
The French physician Pierre Janet first introduced the term abaissement (abaissement du niveau mental, literally meaning “a lowering of the mental level”) into psychology to refer to the idea that at times one can demonstrate that a subject’s field of consciousness can become smaller and restricted:

• “The only essential and certain thing is that this extent of the field of consciousness varies very much with individuals and their state of mind. … [In hysteria] the mind is too narrow to contain several ideas opposing one another. … The field of consciousness becomes … more contracted. The patient can no longer perceive more than two elementary sensations at once. “ (Janet, “The Major Symptoms of Hysteria, 1920, p. 307).

Jung’s understanding of abaissement adds greater value to Janet’s idea by expressing it in energic terms: At times, when under the influence of a psychic factor, the field of consciousness alters because there is not enough “energy” to maintain it normally. This allows normally unconscious factors to become manifested. Then “abaissement” becomes a principle of “the spontaneous or voluntarily lowering of the energy tension of consciousness” manifesting in: 1. The images of normal sleep (dreams); 2. Certain phenomena seen in psychopathology; 3. Parapraxis of everyday life; and 4. Active imagination. Jung notes that “all dreamlike conditions, whether due to fatigue, fever, or toxins, are abaissement phenomena” (SL, para. 511).