Conversations With A Remarkable Man

As a young clinical psychologist, I appreciated the James Hillman interviews. None of my professors or supervisors had ever mentioned him.

I was puzzled, however, by Hillman’s antagonism toward meditation and spirituality. The practice of stopping and looking inward can bring us into contact with our most cherished principles and quiet the mental chatter that says we can’t act effectively. I especially question his notion that “It’s better to go into the world half-cocked than not to go into the world at all,” as this mentality seems to underlie our never-ending cycle of misguided wars.

I just finished reading the excerpts from the interviews with James Hillman [“Conversations with a Remarkable Man,” by Sy Safransky, Scott London, and Genie Zeiger, July 2012], in which Hillman says, “Where you are is as important as where you came from. What you do every day is as important to the soul, to the revelation of the soul, as what your parents did to you, or what you were like when you were five or ten. We don’t generally subscribe to such notions, not really; instead we emphasize the notion of individual career, personal biography.”

As an incarcerated man and someone who has shown addictive tendencies in the past, it has been useful for me to explore my past as a way to chart a future path that will be less selfish and less harmful to me and the people around me. My personal biography is helpful in predicting how I will behave in the future. There is scientific evidence for this. When, as a science teacher, I was trying to explain how we made weather predictions, I’d tell my students that the characteristics of an air mass — temperature, humidity, air pressure — can predict (somewhat) where it will be tomorrow. Similarly, it’s reasonable to say that I, as a former lawbreaker, will continue to do what I have done in the past.

An air mass, however, has no will, and I am not an air mass. Looking only at my past is not a definitive way to predict my future.

I am not defined (or, I would prefer not to be) by the damnable, despicable act that I engaged in. How do humans learn? How do we change the way we act? We do it by choosing never again to do things that bring harm to ourselves or to others. I choose to change.