The Best of James Hollis: Wisdom for the Inner Journey
is a collection of excerpts from the writings of James Hollis, PhD, Jungian psychotherapist and author. These selections span across his body of work from TheMiddle Passage (1993) to Prisms (2021) organized into different topics ranging from the psychological concepts of Carl Jung to the everyday tasks of our living and callings. Hollis’s wisdom will challenge readers to find their own path, to be who they are called to be, to take the risks to trust their soul, and thus live a life worthy of their unique gifts. Hollis’s writings ask us to live a deeper and more authentic life.
James Hollis, Ph.D. is a Jungian Analyst in private practice in Washington, DC. Originally a Professor of Humanities, he is the former Director of the Houston Jung Center and the Washington, D.C. Jung Society. He is Vice-President emeritus of the Philemon Foundation, author of seventeen books, and a frequent public speaker. He lives with his wife Jill, a retired therapist and painter, and together they have three living children.
Prisms: Reflections on the Journey We Call Life James Hollis summarizes a lifetime of observing, engaging, and exploring why we are here, in service to what, and what life asks of us. These 11 essays, all written recently, examine how we understand ourselves, and often have to reframe that understanding, the nature and gift of comedy, the imagination, desire, as well as our encounters with narcissism, and aging.
In Hauntings, James Hollis considers how we are all governed by the presence of invisible forms – spirits, ghosts, ancestral and parental influences, inner voices, dreams, impulses, untold stories, complexes, synchronicities, and mysteries – that move through us through history. He offers a way to understand them psychologically, examining the persistence of the past in influencing our present, conscious lives and noting that engagement with mystery is what life asks of each of us. From such engagements, a deeper, more thoughtful, more considered life may come.
James Hollis, Ph.D., a Jungian Analyst in Washington, D.C., explores the roadblocks we encounter and our on-going challenge to live our brief journey with as much courage, insight, and resolve as we can bring to the table.
Robert A. Johnson, best-selling author of He, She, We and other psychology classics, shares a lifetime of insights and experiences in this easy-to-listen-to explanation of psychological projection – seeing traits in others that are, in fact, our own. He masterfully reveals how each of us gives up our inner gold to those whom we idealize or are attracted to. Each one of us must learn the arduous task of “taking back” this gold as we move through life’s journey.
Drawing on early Christianity, medieval alchemy, depth psychology, and the myths of the Flying Dutchman and the Once and Future King, he also explores the subjects of loneliness, fundamentalist religion, and the spiritual dimensions of psychology.
One of the most influential and visionary analysts of his generation, Johnson follows the tradition of Carl Jung and Joseph Campbell among those whose ideas have shaped our deepest metaphors of self and psyche. His books are known worldwide for presenting Jung’s complex theories with the simplicity and grace.
Robert A. Johnson was more than an international best-selling author of 15 books, brilliant and influential Jungian analyst, and acclaimed international lecturer; he was a master storyteller. This audiobook is a direct recording of Robert’s own tellings of these stories, remastered for improved quality. Robert told these stories, his favorites, to an appreciative and revering community each night at Journey into Wholeness events from 1981 to 2001. Robert collected several of these stories in his beloved India, but the audiobook includes stories and myths from Chinese, Native American, Mexican, and European traditions. Each story is introduced by a colleague, mentee, or friend whose life was profoundly changed by the presence and teachings of this wise and other-wordly sage.
Robert taught us we could enjoy a myth or a story as a child would, or we could listen more carefully to discover a road map for our own inner work. Magical, humorous, tragic, enigmatic, these stories illustrate Robert’s capacity to speak to the delights and adversities of the human experience, and to our collective quest to become our most conscious and authentic selves.
Dr. Murray Stein’s prolific career has produced a substantial body of writings, lectures, and interviews. His writings, captured in these volumes, span a wide domain of topics that include writings on Christianity, individuation, midlife, the practice of analytical psychology, and topics in contemporary society. His deep understanding of analytical psychology is much more than an academic discourse, but rather a deeply personal study of Jung that spans nearly half a century.
The unifying theme of the papers collected in this volume is the individuation process as outlined by C.G. Jung and adopted and extended by later generations of scholars and psychoanalysts working in the field of analytical psychology.
Individuation is a major contribution to developmental psychology and encompasses the entire lifetime, no matter its duration. The unique feature of this notion of human development is that it includes spiritual as well as psychosocial features. The essays in this volume explain and expand on Jung’s fundamental contributions.
Volume 2 of Dr. Stein’s Collected Writings consists of psychological reflections on classical mythology for insight into archetypal structures and dynamics that play out in contemporary life. Mythology is an important resource for depth psychology, and the works included in this volume are a contribution to the archetypal perspective on psyche inspired by the works of C.G. Jung, James Hillman, and Raphael Lopez-Pedraza.
Murray Stein shares these timeless lectures—a work of respectful and loving interpretation. The Bible presents a world elaborated with reference to a specific God image. As the mythographer Karl Kerenyi puts it in writing about the Greek gods and goddesses, every god and every goddess constitutes a world. So it is too with the biblical God, whose name Stein exceptionally capitalizes throughout out of cultural respect. The biblical world is the visionary product of a particular people, the ancient Hebrews and the early Christians, who delved deeply into their God image and pulled from it the multitude of perspectives, rules for life, spiritual practices, and practical implications that all together created the tapestry that we find depicted in the canonical Bible. Yahweh is the heart and soul of this world, its creator, sustainer, and destroyer. The Bible is a dream that tells the story of how this world was brought into being in space and time and what it means.
With the necessary demise and death of antique cosmologies and traditional religious paradigms dependent on external deities and devils, the modern religious challenge involves two simultaneous sacred endeavors: to eulogize, bury, and grieve the theistic and monotheistic god-images and the religions dependent on them; and, secondly, to bring fresh imagination to the meanings of god and religion, which will satisfy both the modern mind and ancient soul.
Drawing on the insights of Jungian or analytical psychology, Dr. Wright offers depth psychological analysis of our contemporary religious and political dilemmas, as well as invites readers to be midwives for the emerging religious myth that many believe to be on our collective horizon — a myth that will be more inclusive, intellectually and scientifically honest, and soul satisfying.
Breast cancer can interrupt a life and demand that we pay more attention to the way we live. In this lyrical and inviting account, Patricia Greer explores associations and images that surround her experience of the disease. A Jungian analyst, she works with metaphors and meanings related to the illness and uses her dreams, inner journeys, and poetry to deepen into and under the reality of cancer. She shares her exploration with the hope that it may help others reflect on their experiences and find insights from understanding cancer as a source of wisdom. For all those who have been touched by the disease and for those who love them, care about them, care for them, breast cancer can be a soul journey.
