My war - and I have yet to win a decisive battle - is with the modes of thought that and conditioned feelings that prevail in psychology and therefore also in the way we think and feel about our being. Of these conditions none are more tyrannical than the convictions that clamp the mind and heart into positivistic science (geneticism and computerism), economics (bottom-line capitalism), and single-minded faith (fundamentalism).
Interpretation
The quote reflects on the struggle against limiting beliefs prevalent in psychology and societal norms.
James Hillman expresses a deep concern about the dominant modes of thought that shape our understanding of psychology and ultimately our existence. He critiques the restrictive nature of positivistic science, capitalism, and fundamentalist beliefs, suggesting that these convictions limit our capacity to think and feel freely, holding our minds and hearts captive to narrow interpretations of life.
In practice
During a lecture on modern psychology, one might use this quote to discuss the limitations imposed by current belief systems.
Everything that everyone is afraid of has already happened: The fragility of capitalism, which we don't want to admit; the loss of the empire of the United States; and American exceptionalism. In fact, American exceptionalism is that we are exceptionally backward in about fifteen different categories, from education to infrastructure.
Mediocrity is no answer to violence. In fact, it probably invites violence. At least the mediocre and the violent appear together as in the old Western movies - the ruffian outlaw band shooting up main street and the little white church with the little white schoolteacher wringing her hands. To cool violence you need rhythm, humor, tempering; you need dance and rhetoric. Not therapeutic understanding.
Why do we focus so intensely on our problems? What draws us to them? Why are they so attractive? They have the magnet power of love: somehow we desire our problems; we are in love with them much as we want to get rid of them . . . Problems sustain us -- maybe that's why they don't go away. What would a life be without them? Completely tranquilized and loveless . . . There is a secret love hiding in each problem
Love alone is not enough. Without imagination, love stales into sentiment, duty, boredom. Relationships fail not because we have stopped loving but because we first stopped imagining.
Instead of seeing depression as a dysfunction, it is a functioning phenomenon. It stops you cold, sets you down, makes you damn miserable.
You don't attack the grunts of Vietnam; you blame the theory behind the war. Nobody who fought in that war was at fault. It was the war itself that was at fault. It's the same thing with psychotherapy.
People hear 'Africa' and they think about charitable commercials, or safari tours and animals. It's our responsibility to help change that perspective.
It is an anxious, sometimes a dangerous thing to be a doll. Dolls cannot choose; they can only be chosen; they cannot 'do'; they can only be done by.
When you're at war, you think about a better life; when you're at peace you think about a more comfortable one.
In the mind there is no absolute or free will; but the mind is determined to wish this or that by a cause, which has also been determined by another cause, and this last by another cause, and so on to infinity.
Poverty is not deprivation, it is isolation.
Could I be assured that America would remain virtuous, I would venture to defy the utmost Efforts of Enemies to subjugate her.
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