In
April of 2010, Dr. James Hillman presented
a weekend seminar in which he returned to
a topic from his earlier days — Old and
Young: Senex and Puer. These opposing yet
complimentary archetypes have been cornerstones
of Jungian psychology, but Hillman brought
his examination of them squarely into the
modern day.
How has time treated these archetypes, and
the living breathing people who embody them?
Hillman, the author of more than 20 books
and the originator of post-Jungian archetypal
psychology, approached the archetype of the
senex (from which senior, senator, and senility
arise) from a personal point of view. After
more than five decades as one of the world’s
most imaginative and confrontational psychological
minds, the senex archetype rules more and
more with each advancing day. Yet, along
with servitude to the tyrany of time and
the physical bondange, he has found that
something else stirs. The liberation from
conformity that age can bring enlivens the
timeless presence of an inner partner – the
puer, with its attributes of risk, vision,
spontaniety, idosyncrasy, and joy.
In addition, Hillman grounded the seminar
in an assessment of the very concrete concerns
of geriatric psychology and the aging of
the American psyche and its institutions.
On the other side of the equation, he examined
one of Western culture’s most troubling syndromes
— the fascination with, and yet cruel neglect
of, youth.
This two-DVD set includes the entirety of Hillman’s two-day seminar, held in
front of a sold-out audience at the Pacifica Graduate Institute in Santa Barbara,
California. The presentation functions as a companion and adjunct to Hillman’s
2005 book, "Senex and Puer". |
