James Hillman: The Eros of the Mind: Review of: Dick Russell, The Life and Ideas of James Hillman, Vols. 1–3. New York: Skyhorse Publishing, 2016, 2023.

Dick Russell's three-volume biography The Life and Times of James Hillman is the definitive work on the proponent of imaginal psychology. It explores Hillman's personal and intellectual development, providing valuable context to a career marked by stunning insights and discoveries. Russell pays particular attention to Hillman's childhood in Atlantic City, his early years in Dublin, and his tenure as director of studies at the Jung Institute in Zürich. He also describes Hillman's three marriages, interviewing two wives and several of his children, and considers his wide-ranging friendships with poets, actors, artists, and philosophers as well as with his fellow analysts Thomas Moore, Rafael López-Pedraza, Adolf Guggenbühl-Craig, and Wolfgang Giegerich. This comprehensive work ends with Hillman's contributions to psychology, his popularity in Italy and Japan, his bestseller The Soul's Code, and his work on animals and the soul of the world. The capstone is Hillman's surprise that Jung himself had a direct confrontation with the ancestors and the gods in The Red Book, anticipating Hillman's revisioning of psychology as an encounter with archetypal energies that live in and through us. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]