The Dream and the Underworld

In a deepening of the thinking begun in The Myth of Analysis and Re-Visioning Psychology, James Hillman develops the first new view of dreams since Freud and Jung. In a profound extension of Jung’s ideas of the collective unconscious, Hillman goes back to classical theories in terms of the poetics of mythology. He relates our dreaming life to the myths of the underworld–the dark side of the soul, its images and shadows–and to the gods and figures of death. This leads to a revisioning of dream interpretation in relation to the psychology of dying. He concludes with the long section on specific dream images and themes as they appear in psychological praxis.