Much has been written by the founders of archetypal psychology regarding the power and immutability of the image. James Hillman asserts that "images are the fundamentals which make the movements of psychodynamics possible".

Much has been written by the founders of archetypal psychology regarding the power and immutability of the image. James Hillman asserts that "images are the fundamentals which make the movements of psychodynamics possible" (Archetypal Psych 7). Surveying the quantity of material Hillman and others have produced in their exploration of an imaginal psychology reveals that each image is an expression of psyche and that, like the Gnostic view of creation, contains bits of a greater numinous soul which one can only hope to witness indirectly by delving into any one of its constituent parts. The seeker may attain an ". . . appreciation of the unfathomable nature of any image, even the meanest, once it dies to its everyday simple appearance" ("An Inquiry" 80). In going down into the essence of the image, Hillman asserts that one "may equally call the unfathomable depth in the image, love, or at least say we cannot get to the soul of the image without love for the image" ("An Inquiry" 81). Unfortunately, the reader is left to deal with the inevitable paradoxes existent within a psychology which, although rigorous in its pursuit of naming and exploration of terms, suggests that the boundaries between points of view both subjective and objective are merely mental constructs and are in fact illusory. How can this psychology, then, speak about the image from a subjective point of view without falling into the crevasse it has created by dissolving subjectivism?

It is no mean leap from Carl Jung's statement that "image is psyche" (Jung 13: para. 75) to "images are souls, and our job with them is to meet them on that soul level" ("An Inquiry" 81). Indeed, Hillman seems to have surreptitiously granted himself this "one miracle" without acknowledging that such an act of faith is prerequisite for archetypal psychology's existence. Perhaps it is this hubris which forces many readers to take sides with or against Hillman's bold assertions and conclusions. Although I find Hillman's exploration of a myriad of areas invaluable, I need to clear the air with this simple critique in the hope that doing so will allow for a more complete understanding of just what the man is saying.

At issue is the complex relation between observer and the observed. Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, also called the indeterminacy principle, "states that a more accurate determination of one quantity will result in a less precise measurement of the other," e.g., in determining the speed of an electron, its location is unknowable, and conversely, in determining a particle's location, its velocity cannot be known (Encarta). How does this relate to the image? First, a purely objective inquiry into any phenomenon "out there" is not possible since our mere presence skews the object's "suchness" to such a degree that any "operation" performed upon it becomes necessarily imbued with the feeling we bring into it. Second, an inquiry into an image's suchness requires an a priori confession that no matter how much of Freud, Jung et al one distills, incorporates or elaborates upon in the formulation of a new approach to the image, one is still nevertheless creating an approach which, by definition, admits that any results attained in applying its theories are skewed by our presence.

Quantum theory has repeatedly proved the validity of the uncertainty principle in the empirical domain of the laboratory. Even though the laboratory Hillman speaks of is the analyst's consultation room and the object of inquiry is the image in the dream as related by the dreamer, I believe it is a valid move to extrapolate a macrocosmic theory based on Heisenberg's; one that we can relate to a larger scale, say of six foot tall bodies shaking hands, participating in psychotherapy, watching a group of climbers ascend a mountain peek or discussing an image in a dream. In these examples, how might we successfully separate our experience from another person's if by simply sharing a moment together each person is irreversibly affected by the other? How can I get to the "soul" of an image in someone else's dream while operating under Hillman's supposition that the image is independent of the dreamer and thus could just have well appeared in my dream? If we at least attempt to cling to a notion of subjectivity, then the hallowed "image" cannot, by the above logic, be independent since it is experienced and thus affected by whatever pure subjective apparatus Hillman will grant us. Isn't the act of speaking of an image forever altering it? Such rhetoric, although cheeky, aptly points to the pervasive paradox inherent to Hillman's treatment of the image, one which segues nicely into questions such as, 'might the image be dreaming me?' Such dissolution of ego-perspective gathers momentum when Hillman asserts that "there is no objective, no scientific, no pure work with images. We are always ourselves in the image and unconscious because of it." Is not, then, the entire process of speaking about an image untenable since the image lives and breathes its own existence, one which is also inextricably intertwined, affected by and experienced through my own apparatus?

If Hillman actually tackled these issues it would be concerning a philosophy and not a psychology. This one miracle granted, Hillman's approach to images and symbols is a fertile one. In his three-part work in progress entitled "An Inquiry into Image," Hillman initiates the reader into archetypal psychology's hermeneutics of sensing the image by way of a "shift of noticing--from what is seen and heard to the way in which it inheres" ("Image-Sense" 134). This inquiry appears in three consecutive issues of Spring spanning the years 1977-1979. In it, Hillman delves deeply into image-work by providing numerous definitions and examples of operations performed upon images as they appear in dreams. A theme which permeates all three articles is the hypothesis which holds:

The autochthonous quality of images as independent . . . of the subjective imagination which does the perceiving . . . First, one believes images are hallucinations (things seen); then one recognizes them as acts of subjective imagining; but then, third, comes the awareness that images are independent of subjectivity and even of the imagination itself as a mental activity. Images come and go (as in dreams) at their own will, with their own rhythm, within their own fields of relations, undetermined by personal psychodynamics. (Archetypal Psych 7)

Hillman suggests that the psychology of the image reflects a reality whose properties resemble Lucien Levy-Bruhl's "participation mystique" where the cosmos, other beings and most importantly our collective psyche are seamlessly inter-connected. It is within this realm where "the noetic and the imaginal no longer oppose each other" ("Silver" 22). In acknowledging his Jungian roots, Hillman quotes the founder of analytical psychology by further qualifying that his inquiry "is still 'psychology' although no longer science; it is psychology in the wider meaning of the word, a psychological activity of a creative nature, in which creative fantasy is given a prior place" (Jung 6: 84). The use of this quote prefigures that Hillman's embarkation upon this imaginal inquiry will bring the reader to another Jungian inspired destination, that of the psychoid layer, a realm where the boundaries of the physical and psychic realms dissolve so that a larger encompassing boundary becomes apparent. Jung believes that the psychoid layer under-girds the collective unconscious and all matter and thus functions as a mediator between the psychic and material planes, much like the image of the Gnostic Ouroboros (the snake eating it's own tail), which simultaneously gives life to and yet paradoxically devours itself; it is a holding of the opposites contra naturum:

for we now know that a factor exists which mediates between the apparent incommensurability of body and psyche, giving matter a kind of "psychic" faculty and the psyche a kind of "materiality," by means of which the one can work on the other . . . all reality would be grounded on an as yet unknown substrate possessing material and at the same time psychic qualities. In view of the trend of modern theoretical physics, this assumption should arouse fewer resistances than before . . . and afford us an opportunity to construct a new world model closer to the idea of the unus mundus" (Jung 10: para. 780).

The reader arrives at such a "unitary world" via Hillman's inquiry into the axiomatic criteria of what makes an image archetypal. It is in asking what prevents us from labeling everything archetypal that Hillman leads us back to the image itself. Perhaps it is in this revisionist mode of operating where the reader can make her own passage to the psychoid layer.

Hillman argues that "dramatic structure, symbolic universality, strong emotion (are) not required in our actual operations with an image." Rather, "an archetypal quality emerges through a) precise portrayal of the image; b) sticking to the image while hearing it metaphorically; c) discovering the necessity within the image; d) experiencing the unfathomable analogical richness of the image." Hillman goes on to show that any image can fit the above criteria and thus the term archetypal becomes redundant. He argues that archetypal points to value and thus by attaching the term to an image, "we ennoble or empower (it) with the widest, richest, and deepest possible significance" ("An Inquiry" 82). In this study of a psychology of valuing it would be fitting to actually work with some images.

Although Hillman specifically points out that an image need not mean a visual experience, I offer here two actual sketches upon which an inquiry of my own, albeit "a la Hillman," may begin (Archetypal Psych 6). These two drawings may be viewed as individual cinematographic frames representing integral parts of a whole movie experience without sound, movement or other frames to inform it. It is in the fleshing out of these frames, with the assistance of several Hillmanian image-operations, that I hope to demonstrate both the strength that a cinematographic analogy brings to my imaginal process and Hillman's urging us towards an archetypal psychology which "gives importance rather than information, evokes rather than describes, and where by recognizing value it furthers inquiry into our images" ("An Inquiry" 84). These imaginal frames, which at first glance appear devoid of emotion, value, significance and meaning may provide an excellent test for our imaginings.

Images I and II occurred to me in a daydream in class as I contemplated the topic of this paper. Image I is viewed from a non-specific position towards the rear of the classroom. In it, I am in chair gazing beyond the professor at the lectern upwards and over to a small window high up above his right shoulder. Through this portal I espy a pair of long, slender eucalyptus trees swaying in the wind, their bark warmly reflecting the pink and brown tones cast by the setting sun. All that is visually available of them to me is the small cross-section which the frame of the window allows. Due to the angle, this view reveals segments of the trees which must be nearly 100 feet from the ground. The bright, artificial yellow light of the classroom contrasts strongly with the natural luminescence of the sight outdoors. This image is an actual snapshot of what I experienced that afternoon.

Image I

Image II jumped into my mind's eye a moment later. It is of another character gazing out of a window in much the same way I am in the first image except that the angle of gazing and the relationship of the window on the wall is reversed; it is a mirror image. The gazer here is female and most decidedly the protagonist from the science fiction film entitled Aliens, the second of the trilogy.

Image II

In it, Sigourney Weaver, playing the role of Lt. Ripley, gazes out of the portal in her cabin aboard an orbiting space station. She sits back, looking wistfully, lost in her thoughts. Possibly worried, she may be contemplating the horror of her experience with the Alien as manifest in the previous film. Her cabin is small, very white and cheerless. The view out of the portal is of black space, some stars and another part of the space station, also white, brightly lit in stark contrast to its inky black surroundings.

Archetypal operations aside, the first thought which occurred to me after experiencing the stark juxtaposition of these two images was how would I, here in Image I of the classroom in 1995, appear to someone looking at me from the middle ages? It then struck me that I would look as far into (foreign to) the future as Ripley looks to me - just as fantastic. I, then, am Ripley, The future is now and I personify it. By viewing the two images proportionally, I propelled myself into the futureness of the present. The second thought which occurred to me is that I could use these images for a paper topic!

Allowing these images to be entered under the category of dream-image is appropriate for the purpose of this paper since they were in effect born of daydreams and thus came out of a deeper psychic reality than one my consciousness could control. In applying some Hillmanian licks to the first image I can say: Classifying the view of the tree windws my perception of it. Blowing trees require a window of perception. When classed as a gazer, trees blow through my window. Only pieces of bigger things are visible to me through my portal. I am gazer in an artificial space. Whenever I gaze, it is past my teacher and through a small window. The sun only sets outside my class, it cannot rise. Whole trees see bits of me through an artificial window. It could only be the sunset illuminating the trees because otherwise it would not feel as warm. Whenever I try to out-class myself, my look is artificial and cold. My teacher misses my gaze and the trees; he doesn't see the opening. My lecturing teacher does not tend to my gazing; my gazing finds any portal it can for escape. My gazing sways with the warm trees high above the teacher. In reading the trees, I see only a part and miss the lecturing. Parts of me feel like blowing in the wind outside this class. I am cut up and swaying in the breeze 100 feet above whenever the teacher reads me. Portaling is a way of segmenting my nature.

A brief standard Jungian analysis may be in order for Image II before exercising any Hillmanian operations upon it. By reversing the direction of the person's gaze, the gender and the sides of the room for the placement of the window, a certain unconscious compensation has occurred in Image II. Male looking left out of a window within an artificial environment into a nature scene at sunset becomes a woman looking right out of a window from stark to starker environment. Yellow, pink and brown become bright white and inky black. Daydreaming male launched into the future becomes anxious female contemplating a terrible past. It is as if the complementary contrast of the images has been increased to the point where no grays remain. Man from Image I projects his anima upon this view of the unconscious in Image II. The anima figure is a battle-weary warrior; nearly androgynous. In the words of Pamela Power, Ripley has encountered "the cosmic Self that calls out from the deep recesses of the unconscious, the Alien is the ultimate other" (Alien 247). It should be noted that it is in this, the second film of the Alien trilogy, that Lt. Ripley displays her most archetypally feminine side as manifest in the selfless ferocity with which she goes back into the nest of the Alien to rescue Boo, a nine year old girl survivor. Here, Boo embodies the divine child archetype which functions in complementary unison with Ripley's heroic mothering. Perhaps the second image evolves from the first as a signal to the psyche that certain drastic measures, ones which are in sharp contrast to a romantic notion of education, are in order if any reckoning with the Self, and the Anima for that matter, is to be had in my psyche.

Taking up Hillman's operatives once again and now turning to the progression created with Images I and II: In my womaness, I am cold - black and white. My view has no air, just space outside and cold white inside. Without a teacher to avoid, I get black and white. My contact with the Alien makes my room white and barren. Only when I look out into space does sitting feel cold and white. The void requires a woman to look into it. Inky black and bright white orbit me whenever I worry and sit. My womaness is a warrior - shaken from the battle with the Self - I anticipate more battles. I am displaced from earth in my orbiting. I look right to the man who looks left. My romantic man on earth forces me to orbit in my femininity. Without a man, I look forward to guns and killing the Alien. As a man, my woman is in nature. Naturally, I sway in my gazing as a man. Artificially, I sit as a woman who actually orbits. Without a teacher, I am a heroine. Whenever I sit I am both orbiting and gazing. Only in my orbiting do I sit and gaze.

This has been an attempt to use some of the "gadgets" Hillman gives us for working an image ("Further Notes" 176). Inherent to this approach is an aversion of looking up in a dictionary of symbols the elements as they appear in dreams, e.g., I believe that the symbol of the trees in Image I takes on an identity of its own within the context of the entire image. Something of the archetypal did seep through my attempt at a Hillmanian working of the image, one that, to Hillman's credit, was more specific to our purpose than the tree symbol, for example, denoting "the life of the cosmos" (Dictionary 347). For me, the trees represented a fecundity with which I am not quite in sink. As Guggenbühl-Craig affirms, "Archetypes are forces of the soul. They were not "made" or "created by humans."

In order to further elaborate a cinematographic analogy, it might be suggested that a symbol graduates to the status of image once I have imbued it with feeling in the Jungian/Hillmanian sense of valuing. In the same manner, a series of still photographs, once imbued with depth through motion and affect through a soundtrack, graduate the photographer's images to the status of motion-picture. Interestingly, it is the correspondence between the affect of the film and the "valuing" of the image where the analogy breaks down and thus demonstrates film's manipulative power to jump-start an audience's valuing mechanisms although the raw content of its images may not warrant such an elevated status. Film is a powerful medium in that anyone with a little effort can contrive a sequence of images to appear deeper than they are by putting a stirring piece of music alongside.

Although not a paper on the psychology of the cinema, it would be interesting to conclude with a thought by John Beebe. "A way to understand a film psychologically is to take its various characters as signifying complexes, parts of a single personality whose internal object relations are undergoing change" (Beebe 265). What then of daydreams which incorporate images from films? Perhaps, my anima, as portrayed by Lt. Ripley is gearing up for battle with my ego.

Works Cited

Beebe, John. "The Anima in Film." Gender and Soul in Psychotherapy. Wilmette, Illinois: Chiron, 1992.

Cirlot, J.E., A Dictionary of Symbols. New York: Barnes & Noble, 1971.

Guggenbühl-Craig, Adolf. The Old Fool and the Corruption of Myth. Trans. Dorothea Wilson. Dallas: Spring Publications, 1991.

Hillman, James. "An Inquiry into Image." Spring. Dallas: Spring Publications, 1977. pp. 62-88.

———. Archetypal Psychology: A Brief Account. Dallas: Spring Publications, 1983.

———. "Further Notes on Images." Spring. Dallas: Spring Publications, 1978. pp.152-182.

———. "Image-Sense." Spring. Dallas: Spring Publications, 1979. pp. 130-143.

———. "Silver and the White Earth (Part Two)." Spring. Dallas: Spring Publications, 1981. pp. 21-66.

Jung, C.G. Collected Works. 20 vols. Trans. R.F.C. Hull. Princeton: Princeton U P, 1954.

Power, Pamela J. "Alien Trilogy." Psychological Perspectives Los Angels, 1992. pp. 245-250.

"Uncertainty Principle." Microsoft Encarta - Multimedia Encyclopedia. 1995 ed.

Copyright 1996 Mark Greene. All rights reserved.

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